Hello Peplink COmmunity & Colleagues,
On Friday, we had a unique PoC opportunity to wire the Pepwave MAX HD4 MBX 5G into a JET; the JET is already fitted with a competitor’s product and two (2) MIMO aircraft-approved antennas, giving us four (4) available LTE connections.
Using a customised RF signal matrix, we successfully attached all sixteen cellular connections with a good signal, including (at ground level) having 5G connectivity.
Power got supplied from the 28VDC of the aircraft via PepXIM SD PMU into the MBX.
For our recent test flight, we left the cellular settings on Auto to grab any frequency available.
We have found one key issue; most of the other issues are solvable, though this issue is a major challenge. The issue is that the 5G chipsets (that also supply the GPS connection) within the MBX appear to not record/capture the GPS details unless it has a working cellular connection. The GPS appears to be using the Cellular #1 chipset, so if this has no cellular connection for most of the flight (yet the other three cellular modems did), there will be no GPS data available to record/capture. This lack of GPS data was a major disappointment for the client and us, as the captured results can not correlate to the tested locations.
These images show an example of the GPS data collected and then re-rendered on Google Earth Pro
The GPS logging issue got fixed in previous models and firmware, though the fault appears to have crept back into the firmware again (8.1.2 GA):
- https://forum.peplink.com/t/balance-max-firmware-8-0-0-rc1/19531/26?u=mldowling
- Firmware 8.1.0 RC 2 - #13 by sitloongs
We have raised a new Peplink Ticket for this 22071003.
We would like to know of any others out there using the GPS features of the Peplink routers and what you are finding with the GPS data when the unit is offline (has no WAN connection). Is the data captured within the router when cellular service/connection is lost, or does it fail to capture the GPS data?
Happy to Help,
Marcus 