Question

Hi,

Thank you for great products!

I will use the RUTX12 on my sail boat.
With the primary modem I will be using my primary ISP SIM card, which comes with unlimited monthly invoiced data service. This will be used most of the time, when there are no problems with the service or signal strength.

For the case when primary ISP network has problems (for example weak or no signal), the secondary modem has my secondary ISP SIM card, which is based on daily fees - on each day with > 0 Bytes of data, a full day will be charged.

How can I manually switch off the secondary modem to avoid the daily charge of the secondary ISP, when the primary network operates without problems? I would like to have full manual control to switch (power) off the modem, so the SIM would not register to the network at all in normal situation.

Thanks,
A-P

Answer 1

Hi,

Glad you like our product!

As you're using RUTX12 both modems are always active no matter what, so they do not have a SIM switch functionality.

So, if you would like to disable modem 2 when modem 1 works fine - you would need to first detect that modem 1 works and then if it does - execute a command that disables modem 2. If modem 1 loses connection - modem 2 must be reenabled.

The best way to do this would be a script that always checks if modem 1 is active simply pinging through it once in a while and if it doesn't - then execute the command.

I will not be able to help you with the script, but I hope I gave enough logic to what should you do.

Command to disable the modem:

gsmctl -D

To enable it:

gsmctl -Q

to control different modems with gsmctl commands use: -O 3-1 or -O 1-1.2

so for example, command to shutdown second modem looks like this:

gsmctl -O 1-1.2 -D

EB.

If ID's do not work - you can see the actual ID's with this command:

ubus call gcont get '{"array":"modems"}'

If you want to learn about scripting you can find information here:

https://openwrt.org/docs/guide-developer/write-shell-script

EB.

Comments

Hi EB,

Thank you very much for your message. I can use these commands by hand (through the Wifi connection), when I want to enable the secondary modem, no real need for a script. I will be onboard the boat and will decide when I want to switch over to the secondary ISP connection :).

Are these settings persistent, i.e. will the disable/enable of the modem settings survive over power cycle / reboot? If not, then I guess I need to have a script run at boot to disable the secondary modem by default, to prevent sedondary SIM registration to network.

Oh and is there a command to query the current power status of the modems?

A-P

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It will boot up back on after the reboot.

But there's an option in Network > Interfaces called "Bring up on boot" that will not allow the interface to come back up a restart (you will have to enable it back manually too).

EB.

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would be nice if an update fw release to disable or control of data use for sim2