E-series Modules Dropping Offline

Connectivity
1

Hello!

This is a bit of a long shot, but thought I would post here in addition to reaching out to support, in case others are also seeing something similar.

We have a fleet of a few hundred devices that have been in operation for 1 to 5 years that are either,

  1. E-series devices (older part of fleet)
  2. B-series devices (newer)

On January 14th, the E-series devices started dropping offline. As of today, 11 have stopped connecting. The timing and coincidence of this makes me think there is some underlying Particle or Carrier issue. These devices are spread out across a large geographical area, so the fact that the units dropping out are all E-series and all within the span of a few days is too strange.

SIM cards show no data usage on these devices.

If anyone else has or is experiencing something similar, please reach out!

In terms of troubleshooting, there is not much we can do. Visiting the remote sites will take time. I will update this thread as we do find a root cause.

2

Which E-Series model, and what country are they located in?

3

It’s most likely the sunset of 2G/3G that’s affecting your devices - we’ve seen a slow trickle of Electrons fall off over the last couple of years as carriers move away from the older technologies.

https://docs.particle.io/reference/discontinued/cellular/2g-3g-sunset/#2g-3g-sunsets-by-date has the specific dates for countries - but not all carriers follow the published dates, and devices might see degraded signal earlier. If you run Cloud Debug | Troubleshooting | Particle on an affected device you’ll see log lines CEREG 2,2 which indicate no signal.
(No data usage is also a good indicator that the device is not connected to the network - a device attempting to connect will still use data)

4

Thanks guys for the quick response.

That was a very promising lead about sunsetting. These units are located in Canada and I see that carriers are providing limited support for 2G/3G in 2025, and no support in 2026. However, checking the devices,
10x were last heard from on LTE Cat-M1
1x was last heard from on 2G

The Electron’s are all: E-series LTE Cat-M1. I am trying to lookup whether these are 404’s or something else. Surprisingly this information is not contained in any Particle invoice or the dashboard.