Serial Studio and LTE modem HUAWEI K5161H

Overview

This project demonstrates how to use Serial Studio to visualize signal quality data from a LTE modem HUAWEI K5161H.

Three methods of sending data are described:

• Virtual Serial Port
• MQTT
• UDP Socket

The examples are implemented on OS Archlinux, in which Serial Studio can be:

• run from AppImage
• installed from Arch User Repository (AUR) manually or by AUR helper, e.g. yay
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  yay -S serial-studio-bin
  

• compiled by cmake

Data from HUAWEI K5161H can be get by url API http://192.168.9.1/api/device/signal
Python was used to receive, process and generate data frames.

<a name="method_1"></a>

Method 1 - Virtual Serial Port

Create Virtual Serial Port

1. Install socat
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   sudo pacman -S socat
   

2. Create a linked pair of virtual serial ports, ttyV0 for listening and ttyV1 for sending data
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   socat -d -d pty,rawer,echo=0,link=/tmp/ttyV0,b9600 pty,rawer,echo=0,link=/tmp/ttyV1,b9600
   

3. You can check the operation of the virtul serial ports by reading the file /tmp/ttyV0
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   cat /tmp/ttyV0
   

   and writing data to the file /tmp/ttyV1
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   echo 100 > /tmp/ttyV1
   

4. Install python-pyserial
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   sudo pacman -S python-pyserial
   

5. Run a Python script lte_serial.py to process data and send it to the virtual serial port /tmp/ttyV1
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   python lte_serial.py
   

Serial Studio configuration for Virtual Serial Port

• Run Serial Studio
• Select DEVICE SETUP → I/O Interface: Serial Port
• Select FRAME PARSING → Parse via JSON Project File
• Select Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj
• Manually enter COM Port → /tmp/ttyV0 and press Enter
• Select Baud Rate → 9600
• Click Connect in upper right corner

After get first frame of data Serial Studio will automatic open dashboard with plots.

<a name="method_2"></a>

Method 2 - MQTT

Prepare MQTT broker

1. Install MQTT broker Mosquitto
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   sudo pacman -S mosquitto
   

2. Run MQTT broker with default settings
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   mosquitto --verbose
   

3. You can check MQTT broker by sending data
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   mosquitto_pub -m "abcd,100,50,75,89" -t "lte"
   

4. Install Python client library for MQTT - paho
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   sudo pacman -S python-paho-mqtt
   

5. Run a Python script lte_mqtt.py to process and send data to the MQTT broker
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   python lte_mqtt.py
   

Serial Studio Configuration for MQTT

• Run Serial Studio
• Select FRAME PARSING → Parse via JSON Project File
• Select Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj
• Click MQTT in the top bar
• Set Host → 127.0.0.1
• Set Port → 1883
• Set Topic → lte
• Select Mode → Subscriber
• Set Keep Alive → 600
• Click Connect

After get first frame of data Serial Studio will automatic open dashboard with plots.

<a name="method_3"></a>

Method 3 - UDP Socket

Solution with UDP Socket looks much simpler than other.

Run a Python script lte_udp.py to process data and send it to the UDP Socket

python lte_udp.py

Serial Studio Configuration for UDP Socket

• Run Serial Studio
• Select DEVICE SETUP → I/O Interface: Network Socket
• Select FRAME PARSING → Parse via JSON Project File
• Select Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj
• Select Socket type → UDP
• Set Remote address → 127.0.0.1
• Set Local port → 5005
• Click Connect in upper right corner

After get first frame of data Serial Studio will automatic open dashboard with plots.