So far, we’ve had a quick look at the hardware, the HEX file firmware, the utility used to program the NVM, and the contents of the NVM. It’s all building up a picture of what the board does and how it does it.

Next I want to power up one of the boards and look at it in operations – what does it actually do when we power it up?

The board just need 9-30V applied to power up. The GPRS module needs an antenna – there is a chance it could be harmed without one. I ordered a cheap GPRS antenna with an MMCX connector on it from eBay for under £5.

Here is one of the boards starting up:

The power-up sequence seems to vary from one board to the next, but for this video, it goes:

• Flashes 88 along with all LEDs (probably a test)
• Flashes firmware version number (2.02)
• Flashes grade (G2)
• Shows “ro” (reset radio module)
• Shows c1/2/3 (lower case c is radio call to ARC, 1 = dialling, 2=handshake, 3=sending data). The two GPRS status LEDs flash.
• Shows A (Comms successful)
• Shows E 21 – error 21 – “PSTN DC line voltage = low or none” – makes sense as I have no phone line connected

Some boards get to c1 and then fail with one of the lower numbered error codes related to the GPRS comms – probably because the SIM has been de-activated.

The next step will be getting the logic analyser onto some of the signals on the board to see exactly what it is doing.