Getting started with NB-IOT BC95 EVB board

erikNL

To get some experience with NB-IOT without spending a fortune, I bought this BC95 EVB board from china. On the feedback page of that module someone mentioned " Board is working fine! Tested on t-mobile NL.", so I figured it was worth a try.

I received the board today, I connected it to a FT232RL FTDI USB To TTL module to see if I would get any output.
The board has a few different tx/rx connectors, but is seems the only ones that give any data back are the main_rx and main_tx connectors at 115200 baud.

When I start the module, I get this output: boudica codeloader - HI2110 codeloader along with some other gibberish characters.
It doesn’t seem that I can do anything after that, I can’t execute any AT commands.

I was wondering if there’s anyone around here with experience with this board and who knows how to move forward from here.![alt text](image url)

metaMaarten

If the main UART doesn’t return anything except boudica codeloader, then it’s most likely that your BCb9-B5 isn’t flashed yet.
Try loading in some firmware, the aliexpress page that you linked says: “Contains 656 656SP1 657 firmware, our latest shipment firmware is 657, no longer in upgrade.”

allard.potma

I got the same problem after trying to update my module from 655SP2 to 656, updating went fine but the module stays in the bootloader.

ericbarten

Hi I notice that from the picture I can see that the module has Band 5. TMNL deploys NBIOT on Band 8. But that is besides the current issue. Normally there are 2 UARTS one for commands and one for debugging or codelloading. The command boudrate must be 9600 8,N,1 no control flow, DTR/RTS and send with enter

erikNL

@metamaarten Thanks for the tip. That was indeed the case. After flashing it with CodeLoadBC95HB.bat (available here in software: https://docs.t-mobile.nl/s/Huvmz5cSzciPtlv) I was getting proper output at 9600 bouw at the main tx/rx pins.

Unfortunately, @ericbarten is also right, there is a BC95-B5 on the board,m wich is not going to work in europe, BC95-B8 is required, so I guess it’s back to the drawing board for me…