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If you've ever tried to build an IoT device that uses 4G, you know it generally sucks. Haven't yet, but may soon in near future. Care to elaborate in a sentenc
by klingonopera 7y ago
If you've ever tried to build an IoT device that uses 4G, you know it generally sucks.
Haven't yet, but may soon in near future. Care to elaborate in a sentence?
- mdorazio 7y agoI'll try. 2G/edge was a solid platform due to low modem cost and cheap data available on multiple carriers, but the spec is mostly phased out at this point. 3G and 4G modems have both been expensive in hardware cost, expensive in bandwidth cost, and massive power hogs if your device needs to run on batteries. It usually ends up being a better bet to try to get LoRa or XBee working for device-to-device (despite their limitations) and having only a single "expensive" box for cellular internet connection, but this gets tricky if you need communications across fairly large geographies (ex. distributed outdoor sensors).
- klingonopera 7y agoThanks for the info! Yes, I would've always used a "hub" to connect devices to the outside world, it's the sensible thing to do. I checked out the availability of hardware on eBay Germany, and it seems GSM/GPRS modules start at €3.00, averaging at about €12.00, whereas 4G modules start at €30.00, and average around €70.00, that's quite a hike! I'm guessing the Arduino MKR NB 1500 is something like a "reference device", and runs for ~€66.00 before tax on their own website. It has the uBlox SARA-R410M 02B chip on it. A cheaper alternative seems to be the SIM7600CE and its variants, selling from Chinese traders around €30.00 to €70.00. Does anyone have any experience with any of the chips I mentioned?