Connecting the Raspberry Pi 3 with a 3G dongle (Qualcomm Modem)

3g raspberry-pi3 internet-connection usb-modeswitch
anthrx picture anthrx · Nov 8, 2016 · Viewed 8.4k times · Source

I recently bought a 3G dongle for a project I'm working on. I want my Raspberry Pi to be able to receive SMS messages and respond to them. I got a HSDPA 3g dongle with a 7.2mbps connection. I've set up the dongle on Windows with an A1 (not sure if you guys know this provider) sim and it works fine. I can connect to the internet just fine and also receive text messages (SMS)

However when I try connecting it to my Raspberry Pi (with Raspbian OS) then it doesn't work. It's always show as a "Mass Storage Device".

I tried my luck with usb_modeswitch and wvdial and with Sakis3g as well, but I can't get it to work. My problem with usb_modeswitch and wvdial was that even after I tried everything explained on these 2 blog posts (https://www.thefanclub.co.za/how-to/how-setup-usb-3g-modem-raspberry-pi-using-usbmodeswitch-and-wvdial ; https://nicovddussen.wordpress.com/2014/11/12/setting-up-your-raspberry-pi-to-work-with-a-3g-dongle/) it still didn't switch to the modem mode. It always stays at the "Mass Storage Mode". I saw an alternative and tried using Sakis3G, but with no luck as well. Seems like their website (sakis3g.org / sakis3g.com) is offline and you can't download certain .tar.gz folders/files anymore. I tried my luck with this blog post. (https://shkspr.mobi/blog/2012/07/3g-internet-on-raspberry-pi-success/)

And you guessed it, I couldn't get it to work either. It doesn't let me download the .gz folder/file because the website appears to be down.

It's a very big problem for my project and I would appreciate any help. It's really important. If anyone knows what I can do to fix this, please offer help. I'd really appreciate it.

Greetings.

Answer

dbmitch picture dbmitch · Nov 9, 2016

Trying using tips supplied in this article

  1. Unplug your modem
  2. Open a terminal prompt

  3. Install the usb-modeswitch package by typing in:

    sudo apt-get install usb-modeswitch

EDIT... ADD REBOOT STEP

  1. Reboot Pi

Plug the modem in,
Give it a couple of seconds and then try commands to confirm it worked

lsusb
ifconfig -a

You should see a new interface (Note the name of it - might be something like wwan0 )

To get this to acquire an IP address, edit the file /etc/network/interfaces and add the lines:

allow-hotplug wwan0  
iface wwan0 inet dhcp

EDIT - REBOOT AGAIN
........

EDIT - UPDATE
Also note that the full version of sakis3G has this usb-modeswitch embedded in it.

You can still download code and look at instructions at old site that's been archived at: http://web.archive.org/web/20130511202305/http://www.sakis3g.org/#download

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