Serial Studio and LTE modem HUAWEI K5161H

Overview

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

Three methods of sending data are described:

• Virtual Serial Port
• MQTT
• UDP Socket

The examples were built on Arch Linux, where you can:

• Run Serial Studio from AppImage.

• Install it from the Arch User Repository (AUR) manually or with an AUR helper like yay:

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  yay -S serial-studio-bin
  

• Build it with cmake.

Data from the HUAWEI K5161H is pulled from the URL API http://192.168.9.1/api/device/signal. Python is used to receive, process, and generate data frames. All three scripts read the API with the requests library:

sudo pacman -S python-requests

Each frame carries five values, matching the datasets in LTE Modem.ssproj: cell ID, RSRQ (dB), RSRP (dBm), RSSI (dBm), and SINR (dB). All three scripts wrap each frame in the project's /* and */ start and end sequences.

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

Method 1: Virtual serial port

Create a 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. Test the virtual serial ports by reading from /tmp/ttyV0:

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   cat /tmp/ttyV0
   

   and writing data to /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 the Python script lte_serial.py to process data and send it to /tmp/ttyV1:

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   python lte_serial.py
   

Serial Studio configuration for the virtual serial port

1. Run Serial Studio.
2. Go to DEVICE SETUP → I/O Interface: UART/COM.
3. Go to FRAME PARSING → Parse via Project File.
4. Pick Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj.
5. Manually enter COM Port → /tmp/ttyV0 and press Enter.
6. Pick Baud Rate → 9600.
7. Click Connect in the upper right corner.

After the first frame of data arrives, Serial Studio opens the dashboard with plots automatically.

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Method 2: MQTT

The MQTT driver is a Pro feature and requires a Serial Studio Pro license (trial or paid). See serial-studio.com for details.

Set up the MQTT broker

1. Install the MQTT broker Mosquitto:

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   sudo pacman -S mosquitto
   

2. Run the MQTT broker with default settings:

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   mosquitto --verbose
   

3. Test the broker by sending data:

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   mosquitto_pub -m "abcd,100,50,75,89" -t "lte"
   

4. Install the Python MQTT client library, paho:

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   sudo pacman -S python-paho-mqtt
   

5. Run the Python script lte_mqtt.py to process data and send it to the broker:

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   python lte_mqtt.py
   

Serial Studio configuration for MQTT

1. Run Serial Studio.
2. Go to DEVICE SETUP → I/O Interface: MQTT Subscriber.
3. Go to FRAME PARSING → Parse via Project File.
4. Pick Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj.
5. Set Hostname → 127.0.0.1.
6. Set Port → 1883.
7. Set Topic Filter → lte.
8. Set Keep Alive (s) → 600.
9. Click Connect.

After the first frame of data arrives, Serial Studio opens the dashboard with plots automatically.

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Method 3: UDP socket

The UDP socket approach is simpler than the others.

Run the 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

1. Run Serial Studio.
2. Go to DEVICE SETUP → I/O Interface: Network Socket.
3. Go to FRAME PARSING → Parse via Project File.
4. Pick Project file → LTE Modem.ssproj.
5. Pick Socket Type → UDP.
6. Set Remote Address → 127.0.0.1.
7. Set Local Port → 5005.
8. Click Connect in the upper right corner.

After the first frame of data arrives, Serial Studio opens the dashboard with plots automatically.