Tracker setup

Hardware setup

Tracker evaluation board

Num	ID	Description
1	GNSS USB	u-blox GNSS USB connection
2	CELL USB	Quectel cellular modem USB connection
3	JTAG	JTAG/SWD debugging connector for nRF52 MCU
4	NFC	NFC antenna connection for NFC tag feature
5	MODE	MODE button
6	RGB	RGB status LED
7	RESET	RESET button
8	MCU USB	nRF52 MCU USB-C for debugging or power.
9	J8	3V3 LED jumper. Normally installed, remove to disable 3V3 LED.
10	3V3 LED	Power LED, indicates 3.3V supply is enabled.
11	STAT LED	Charge status indicator.
12	J9	STAT LED jumper. Normally installed, remove to disable STAT LED.
13	VIN	External power 5-12 VDC
14	LiPo	JST-PH connector for LiPo battery
15	S4	Battery switch
16	S6	SoM power switch
17		Expansion connector
18	J10	Grove connector (A0, A1 or I2C)
19	J11	Grove connector (A2, A3)
20	S5	RTC battery switch
21	RTC battery	Optional battery
22	J4	CAN data connection and 3.3V power output
23	J5	CAN power jumper (selects 3.3V or 5V)

Antennas

The Tracker SoM Evaluation board requires several external antennas that connect to the Tracker SoM directly:

Cellular antenna (1)
GNSS antenna (6)
Wi-Fi antenna (2) (optional, needed for Wi-Fi geolocation)

Label	Purpose
1	Quectel cellular modem antenna
2	Wi-Fi antenna for Wi-Fi geolocation (optional)
3	External Bluetooth (optional)
4	Built-in Bluetooth chip antenna
5	Quectel GNSS antenna (optional)
6	u-blox GNSS antenna (GPS)
7	u-blox Neo M8 GNSS (GPS)
8	Quectel cellular modem

Powering

Connect the LiPo battery to the battery connector (14).
Connect the Tracker Evaluation board to your computer by USB. Use the included USB-C to USB-A cable, or a if your computer includes a USB-C port, your own USB-C to USB-C cable and connect to the MCU_USB connector (8).
Turn on the SoM Power (16) switch and the Battery switch (15).

Status LEDs

The STAT LED (9) indicates the charge status:

Off: Not charging or no power
On: Charging
Blinking: Charge fault
Flickering: No battery

The 3V3 LED (11) indicates that the 3.3V MCU power supply is enabled. Jumper J8 disconnects the power LED.

The RGB LED (6) can be configured for the standard Particle color scheme (blinking green, blinking cyan, breathing cyan) or the color scheme used by the Tracker One.

The standard LED pattern for Tracker SoM Evaluation Boards devices is the standard Particle LED scheme (blinking green, breathing cyan). You can find more information here.

Tracker One

Powering

Connect the Tracker One to your computer by USB. Use the included USB-C to USB-A cable, or a if your computer includes a USB-C port, your own USB-C to USB-C cable and connect to the external USB C connector.
Power by the M8 connector.
Connecting power will take the device out of shipping mode. The shipping mode allows the device to be safely shipped with the battery attached and without discharging the battery. It can only be exited by supplying external power.

Status LEDs

The standard LED pattern for Tracker One devices is:

Fast breathing red while trying to connect to cellular.
Once connected to cellular, will show relative signal strength of yellow (weaker), or green (stronger).
Breathing signal strength color indicator while connecting to the cloud (yellow or green)
Solid signal strength indicator (yellow/green) once connected.

You can find more information here.

Powering off

The Tracker One does not have a power switch. You can turn it off from the cloud by using Shipping Mode.

When viewing a device in the console, in the functions and variables area on the right, is the cmd box.

In this box, enter {"cmd":"enter_shipping"} and click the Call button.

Shipping mode powers off the device by disconnecting the battery. This allows a Tracker One to be shipped in a way that the battery does not discharge without having to open the case and disconnect the battery. Note that you can only get out of shipping mode by connecting the device to USB power or power by the M8 connector.

On a successful cmd request, the result is 0. A result of -22 indicates the JSON is invalid. Be sure that you've included the surrounding curly brackets {} and the double quotes are the "straight quotes" not the “typographical quotes.”

In the future, it will also be possible to enter shipping mode by USB, but this command is not yet available in the Particle CLI.

Warning: Particle has discovered an issue with GPIO current leakage through Tracker One's M8 connector that affects Tracker One v1.0 devices manufactured prior to August 31, 2020 and can adversely affect the use of shipping mode for devices that use the M8 connection to an external peripheral device. For more information see TAN002 - Tracker One v1.0 Shipping Mode.

Resetting configuration

To reset all of the settings stored locally on device, use the same techique as above to call the cmd function handler, but instead pass:

{"cmd":"reset_to_factory"}

Other functions

Other functions that would normally be performed by button presses can be done using the Particle CLI when connected by USB. For example:

particle usb reset
particle usb dfu
particle usb safe-mode
particle usb start-listening
particle usb stop-listening

Setup

To set up your device, go to https://setup.particle.io. This will guide you through the steps needed to activate your SIM and set up your device.

If you prefer to manually set up your device, click on the triangle to open the manual setup instructions:

Manual Setup

Create a product

All Asset Tracker devices are intended to be used in a product, not as developer devices. This makes it easy to manage a fleet of asset trackers, allowing per-fleet and per-device configuration settings, and features like fleet mapping.

It's OK if you're starting out with a single Tracker; you can create a free prototyping level product that only has one device in it. From the console, click on the Products icon (1) then New Product (2).

When you create the product, be sure to select Asset Tracker (Cellular as the type.

You will probably also want to opt into the storage of geolocation data. In the Settings (gear) icon, check the box to enable it. The privacy policy can be found here.

Cloud setup

These setup steps are intended for setting up a few developer trackers. Fleet setup steps are slightly different and can more easily be automated. For example, when you make a tray order of devices from the wholesale store, you get an email with the serial numbers of the devices.

Get the device information

You can set up the device using the serial number on the sticker, it may be easier to just connect the device by USB and use the Particle CLI, which makes it easy to copy and paste instead of typing the serial number.

Hold down the MODE button until the status LED blinks dark blue (listening mode). Then use the Particle CLI command:

$ particle identify
Your device id is e00fce6851c5ffffffff4478
Your IMEI is 865284011111120
Your ICCID is 89014103271401111114
Your system firmware version is 1.5.3

Add device to product

Select your Asset Tracker product and then the Devices icon. Click the Add Devices then Add One Device. Copy and paste the Device ID (24-character hex). You could also type the serial number in this box.

Adding the device to your product will automatically add the SIM card to the product as well.

If you want to be able to flash the device directly from Workbench, CLI, or the Web IDE, you will want click the ... button on the right edge of the device list for your device and select Mark development device.

Claim device

When using fleets of devices, it's not necessary to claim your device to an account. You will want to claim your device if:

The device is a development device and you want to be able to flash code from Particle Workbench, CLI, or the Web IDE.
You are using custom device firmware that subscribes to private events on the device. Only claimed devices can access private events.

In order to claim a device, it must be online and breathing cyan. If you've completed the steps above it should be now, and then you can use the CLI to claim. Replace <device-id> with your actual Device ID (24 character hex).

particle device add <device-id>

You may also want to name your device:

particle device rename <device-id> "Tracker-1"

Device firmware

One difference between the Tracker One and other Particle devices is that the Tracker One firmware can be used in three different ways:

Completely off-the-shelf. With its cloud-based configuration, you can use the firmware as-is with no modifications in some cases.
Semi-custom. The Tracker One firmware is customizable on-device making it possible to add new sensors and customize behavior while still making it easy to upgrade the base firmware.
Custom. The Tracker One firmware is open-source so you can duplicate and modify it for completely custom applications. Or build your own completely from scratch.

The Tracker firmware is included on the device from the factory instead of Tinker.

Previously, product firmware needed to have the product ID embedded in the binary. As long as you add the Device ID of your Tracker SoM to the product first, this is no longer necessary. The factory binary can be used with your product without having to recompile. Using setup.particle.io to set up your device will take care of this for you automatically.

Map view

One good place to get started is the map view in the console.