Author: David Santinoli david-at-santinoli-dot-com
Last revised: 24 Dec 2010
This document is targeted to an audience having a decent knowledge of Linux.
The E1692 is a UMTS/HSDPA USB dongle which, as of June 2009, is being sold in Italy by the TIM telephone operator.
The E1692 is one of those "dual mode" devices which upon insertion are identified as a CD-ROM drive, and switch to a serial device (modem) when prodded with a particular control sequence. The CD-ROM includes some software by the operator and a driver. I didn't even try to install this stuff, believing that it would be much better to rely only on standard Linux components.
Eventually, I got it working on a Ubuntu system running a 2.6.28.5 kernel, but the instructions that follow are general enough to fit many different setups.
When in CD-ROM mode the device exhibits the 12d1:1446 USB ID, which becomes 12d1:140c in serial device mode.
The usb_modeswitch
utility is required to switch to serial device mode. Install it and edit the
/etc/usb_modeswitch.conf file as follows:
# Huawei E1692 DefaultVendor= 0x12d1 DefaultProduct= 0x1446 TargetVendor= 0x12d1 TargetProduct= 0x140c MessageContent="55534243000000000000000000000011060000000000000000000000000000" CheckSuccess=5Then run
usb_modeswitch (you might need to run it as root, e.g.
sudo usb_modeswitch, if you are unsure whether you have the proper
permissions to access the device). If all goes well, the messages
Found a new device in target mode or class Mode switch succeeded. Bye.will show up in the output, and
lsusb will display the new USB ID:
Bus 001 Device 123: ID 12d1:140c Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd.
Before running
usb_modeswitch, make sure that no other process is accessing the
storage part of the device. Double-check that it is not mounted anywhere in the
filesystem tree. Especially beware of file managers which automatically try to
mount every piece of hardware that gets connected to the system (Nautilus is
one of these).
option
driver. To see if your kernel version supports the device, look for
alias: usb:v12D1p140Cd*dc*dsc*dp*icFFiscFFipFF*in the output of
modinfo option.
After the device is switched to modem mode, the module should be automatically
loaded (check with lsmod). As a consequence, the (pseudo) serial
devices /dev/ttyUSB0 to /dev/ttyUSB3 should become
available (look for them in dmesg). The first of them,
/dev/ttyUSB0, is the one you can use with serial port applications
like minicom and, most importantly, pppd.
/dev/ttyUSB0 as the serial
port in the pppd configuration file, and keep in mind that dialing over UMTS
requires different strings than POTS.
Anyway, these are my configuration files (they were named after my telephone
operator, TIM - and you might want to substitute the proper APN for yours in
place of ibox.tim.it):
/etc/chatscripts/tim:
ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED '' ATZ OK-AT-OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","ibox.tim.it" OK-AT-OK AT+CGQREQ=1,2,4,3,6,31 OK-AT-OK AT+CGQMIN=1,2,4,3,6,31 OK-AT-OK AT+CGATT=1 OK-AT-OK ATD*99# CONNECT ''
/etc/ppp/peers/tim:
hide-password noauth connect "/usr/sbin/chat -v -s -f /etc/chatscripts/tim" debug -crtscts /dev/ttyUSB0 460800 defaultroute noipdefault remotename huawei ipparam huawei usepeerdns nodetachWith this setup, the Internet connection can be established and terminated with
pon tim and poff, respectively.
Although it is branded TIM, the dongle can work with other operators as well.
Different PPP configurations for different SIM cards can coexist without
problems. Run pon operator1, pon operator2 etc. to
refer to the configurations under /etc/ppp/peers.
In some cases, some minor tweaks might be required. For example, I had no
success with H3G (a.k.a. Tre Italia) until I realized that the PIN of the SIM
had to be included at the beginning of the dialing sequence. Here is my
/etc/chatscripts/tre:
ABORT BUSY ABORT 'NO CARRIER' ABORT VOICE ABORT 'NO DIALTONE' ABORT 'NO DIAL TONE' ABORT 'NO ANSWER' ABORT DELAYED '' ATZ OK "AT+CPIN=XXXX" OK-AT-OK AT+CGDCONT=1,"IP","tre.it" OK-AT-OK ATD*99# CONNECT ''Replace XXXX with your PIN.