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HELP – Resolving SIM Roaming Switch-over Issues

If the SIM within your BEAM unit is enabled for roaming then your passengers should be access the Internet as normal when in different countries.  However, due to the way roaming SIMs register with partner networks, you may find that the SIMs don’t automatically switch to a new partner network when moving between territories, as each territory needs to be authorised at the time of registration.  Normally this is resolved by ensuring the unit is restarted when you move into the new territory because this restarts the SIM registration process.  The BEAM unit will not attempt to (re)connect to a mobile network unless it receives a successful registration message back from the network.

If you are having problems with seamless network switching, then we may need to investigate further by checking the messages that are returned by the mobile network when the BEAM unit requests registration.  To do this, we need to check a file that is created when registration is attempted but a connection cannot be made.
 
Depending on the type of SIM tariff or network operator you are using, seamless network switching may not be possible between territories without a full reboot of the BEAM system.
Please note that this only applies to the BW130, BW230 and BW280 devices.  This procedure is not supported on the BW100 devices as they dial-up to the Internet using a proprietary method that we cannot override.
 
As we cannot access the unit remotely when there is no Internet connection, these are the steps needed in order to do this:
– Install a program such as WinSCP so that you can log into the unit and download the file
– Connect to the Beam Accessory channel
– Log into BeamOS using WinSCP
– Locate the file to download
– Send us the file for checking

Install WinSCP (for Windows)

1) Download WinSCP from here.  Choose the Installation package download option.
 
2) Install WinSCP onto your PC

Connect to the BEAM Device

3) Connect to the hidden Admin Wi-Fi Channel network of the unit using a laptop.  If you do not have the details for this then please raise a support ticket, quoting the serial number of your unit.  These are not publicly available to keep your unit secure.
 
4) If you are connected to another network at the same time (for example your office Ethernet), before you can access the BeamOS system, you may need to create a route in Windows so it knows how to find the BeamOS controller board inside the unit, as it runs on a different sub-net from the Beam Admin network.  Otherwise you can skip this step.
 
To do this, you need open a Command session in Windows (also known as a DOS window) – you will need to do this in Administrator mode (i.e. Run as Administrator).  In the command window, type the follow:
 
route ADD 192.168.100.0 MASK 255.255.255.0 192.168.42.1 METRIC 1
 
If successful then you will receive an OK! response.  You can double check this by pinging the BeamOS controller board to see if you get a response, as shown below.
 
ping 192.168.100.254
beamos windows route add

Log Into BeamOS

5) Open WinSCP and in the Login window, enter the details as shown in the following screen, this click the Login button.  You will need your BeamOS login details which can be found on the Factory Config document that accompanied your unit.

beamos scp login
Download Files

6) Once logged in, you will see the BeamOS file system in the right-hand pane of the WinSCP window.  In this pane, navigate to the /ramfs folder and select the file called networkreg.txt.  You can download this file by dragging it to your desktop or other folder on your PC.  Do the same with the file wvdial.cfg.

beamos scp ramfs
beamos scp ramfs contents
7) When trying to register with the mobile network, networkreg.txt file is written to every few seconds as the SIM tries to negotiate with the mobile network.  As such ensure that the file is not empty, and that it contains data which looks something like the following.  You can do this by opening the file in Notepad:
ATOKAT+COPS?+COPS: 0,0,”EE”,7OK
 
The above example is data from a successful SIM registration on the UK EE network.  Depending on your text viewer, you may find the above spread over several lines.
 
If the file is empty then you may need to download it again.
 
8) For further debugging, it would also be useful to download the file /var/log/syslog.  This will be a largish file in the /var/log folder which contains some of the logging information generated by the BeamOS dialler scripts.
 
9) Send the files to us to support@beamonboard.com as part of your existing support ticket.
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