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Swarm M138 Modem
- kristianpaul 4y agoTransmits and receives 2-way data via Swarm’s satellite network. Designed to be embedded into a third-party IoT device. Data delivered via a REST API or Webhook to any cloud service.
- h2odragon 4y ago$200ea @q1: https://www.sparkfun.com/products/21287 https://www.sparkfun.com/products/21287 > 37-138 MHz (downlink), 148-150 MHz (uplink) Makes me wonder how this deals with local noise. There's rather a lot of extant traffic in that range already and its worst in populated areas; even rural tho there's going to be things wandering by that speak loud in that range.
- dgnorton 4y agoMight be using a digital mode designed for weak signal communications. I'm not familiar with what might be used commercially but in amateur radio FT8 is popular and amazing. I live in a neighborhood with ~900 homes, restrictions on antennas, and quite a high noise floor. On 20m wavelength (granted, quite different from the 2m λ of this modem) with a center fed dipole antenna (SWR 1.5) that is 2m off the ground (not good for long distance because the ground reflects most of the radiated energy is up rather than out) and transmitting at 100 watts, I can send and receive messages 17700km (11000 miles). Using regular analog voice instead of FT8, I get about 3200km (2000 miles) with the same setup. Those distances are on the surface of the earth. The actual radio signal is traveling a bit further because it bounces between Earth and ionosphere as it travels. For this modem, the signal would be traveling line-of-sight and probably less than 1000km?
- Scoundreller 4y ago> restrictions on antennas Assuming you’re in USA, what you need is a tower with “An antenna that is designed to receive local television broadcast signals.” https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/installing-consumer-owned-antennas-and-satellite-dishes https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/guides/installing-consumer-own...
- dgnorton 4y agoInteresting :)
- dbancajas 4y agoCould you try with QRP 5watts to see how far you can reach? 11K miles on 100w is not that impressive?
- dgnorton 4y agoIt’s impressive, to me at least, given the antenna is in an NVIS configuration (configured for distances of ~1k miles) and given that anything below S7 is in the noise. I have tried QRP and cannot reach overseas with this antenna placement.
- ianpurton 4y agoWhat kind of use cases is this useful for?
- wslh 4y agoMoving sensors of low bandwidth? BTW, is it possible to use the Apple Mesh network as an Apple Tag does? Or from the API perspective is a kernel side interface?
- sleepybrett 4y agoi don't think the airtag uses a mesh network per say. it's more like someone elses phone sees an airtag and reports the phone's gps position/timestamp/airtagid back to apple over whatever data connection it has. That's certainly how 'Tile' works. It's not like it's hopping phone to phone to get back to you.
- pkraft 4y agoWhat happens to the data service in the event of societal collapse and ground control systems are offline indefinitely? Will subscribers instantly lose data service or will they have access until they reach the end of their paid subscription?
- pjc50 4y agoObviously it's doomed, but I can't imagine the line of thinking under which this is a useful question.
- lsaferite 4y agoI do find it to be an oddly interesting thought though. What services would continue without interruption until they failed?
- UncleEntity 4y agoProbably all the ones which could be reasonably maintained. I think in the event of ‘societal collapse’ people would have bigger problems with trying to feed themselves than if some satellites or twitter went offline.
- pkraft 4y agoCoordinating with loved ones that are scattered around a region. Lora radio is one option but the range is limited.
- ianburrell 4y agoI’m disappointed that LTE Direct didn’t take off. It sounds like it has to be builtin to firmware or even requires hardware changes, and manufacturers didn’t add it. Probably cause couldn’t see way to make money. It would be perfect for short-range comms, replacing walkie-talkies and messaging. It would work with phones that people already have. For mid-range, cell towers on hilltops with link to other places would work. Except I heard cell towers need a lot of network infrastructure to work. And may consume too much power to work off solar. Simple solar-powered, self-contained cell sites would be useful for disasters and other events.
- prenoob 4y agoNot available everywhere yet, is it regulatory reasons or coverage? What satellites does it work with?
- pmorici 4y agoSwarm was bought by SpaceX a year or two ago. They were originally launching their own micro satellite constellation. Not sure how it works since SpaceX bought them.
- cozzyd 4y agoI knew they were part of SpaceX now (though it's not obvious from the website), but didn't realize they were bought. It's a completely different band from Starlink satellites though, but I suppose new satellites can incorporate additional hardware (not sure what the antenna design would be though... VHF wavelengths are way bigger...).
- mlindner 4y agoSwarm operates as a wholly owned subsidiary as far as I can tell. It wasn't fully integrated into SpaceX.
- mlindner 4y agoThey still use Swarm's own satellites. And Swarm still launches additional satellites. They last launched 12 satellites on January 3rd on a Falcon 9 launch.
- tecleandor 4y agoI think it's purely FCC like regulation/certification, at least from what I've read in the device description. Also, they have an "asset tracking device" that claims to have world coverage. Swarm provide global coverage over all regions, but there are regulatory restrictions for specific countries. The current list of approved countries / regions for the M138 Modem is: USA, Antarctica, Australia, Austria, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Denmark, Georgia, Germany, Greenland, Iceland, Ireland, New Zealand, Netherlands, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom and International Waters (12 nautical miles offshore). Swarm continues to grow this list of approved countries as quickly as possible. Customers will receive regular updates on approved regions through the Swarm newsletter.
- eigenvalue 4y agoSeems incredibly expensive on a per packet/kb basis. Trying to understand what the target market is. I could understand using it for remote telemetry and location tracking purposes for expensive construction equipment or something, but not for most consumer applications.
- pjc50 4y agoYes, that's clearly the market it's aimed at - remote, low data rate sensors. 750 packets per month is about one per hour. Ideal if you want to report the weather from the top of a mountain or the middle of the Pacific.
- thamer 4y agoYou mentioned mountains, and I was thinking this might work well for seismic instruments placed in remote locations if the data plan is enough to transmit this kind of data.
- pmorici 4y agoIt is meant to be cost competitive with Iridium’s Short Burst Data service I believe. Compared to Iridium it is incredibly cheap for similar service.
- Tepix 4y agoExpensive? There is no cheaper option.
- jimmyswimmy 4y agoOnce you start thinking with "kilo"bytes in the denominator, you're in the wrong ballpark. There are tons of applications for remote insitu sensors which don't send much data, or often. Game cameras, equipment trackers, sensors, numerous other applications would use this. For me this is the world of custom electronics, true bare metal systems (no OS but what you write for yourself) and tiny battery packs. A 5$/month data plan is amazing for what this includes.
- jpm_sd 4y agoGood comparison between Swarm and Iridium SBD from 2022. Latency on Swarm transmissions can be very high. https://nootropicdesign.com/projectlab/2022/07/30/swarm-vs-iridium-for-satellite-iot/ https://nootropicdesign.com/projectlab/2022/07/30/swarm-vs-i...
- gnfargbl 4y agoI read your comment on latency and thought "eh, can't be so bad, most of the applications for this will be near-real-time alerting for equipment failure and physical intrusion, and those applications can cope with a few seconds extra latency." By goodness, I was some distance out -- according to that link, the average latency on Swarm is about 40 minutes, and it can be as much as two hours. With that level of latency, I really am struggling to think what this could be useful for. Historic environmental monitoring, OK. What else?
- xbar 4y ago"Historic" is a extreme for a 40 minute latency. Maybe we could call it non-emergency environmental monitoring. Also, remote facility tampering monitoring or remote system monitoring. If it's going to take you 2 days to get to a place to address an issue, 40 minutes to get notified seems fine.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Scoundreller 4y agoI’ve been wanting to set up something like this for a remote cabin to turn on the heat some hours before we arrive when it’s really cold. But even $5/month seems like too much for us. If it was pay per use, that’d be great. I was excited by helium but it seemed too difficult to setup. Wasn’t surprised to find out that nobody was actually using it for, you know, data.
- mynameisvlad 4y ago
- psim1 4y agoWould this need to be attached to an amplifier and large (at least quarter wave) antenna in order to transmit to satellites? Why VHF? Wouldn't upper UHF be a better choice for transmission to satellites?
- DeathArrow 4y agoData plans are expensive if you send more than a few bytes. Any good alternatives to satellite connections in remote areas? Maybe radio?
- xen2xen1 4y agoHam radio, depending on application.
- sleepybrett 4y agoYou can get a couple of miles out of LoRa. The radios are pretty cheap. Though if your sensor is miles and miles from things maybe a bit of an issue stringing these things out (with solar panels and backup batteries etc) could be a pain. https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with-off-the-shelf-hardware/ https://hackaday.com/2020/02/26/lora-mesh-network-with-off-t...
- boredumb 4y agoSeems very cool. To see the pricing I had to go add a z-index to your '.overlay' to get it to show up.
- daneel_w 4y agoTheir data plan of 750 192-byte packets per month stretched out: you get to send 25 packets per day. Extremely niched use cases, e.g. rescue beacon or weather/radiation monitoring far out in nowhere.
- nordsieck 4y agoWould this be a good fit for shipping containers? I assume that most of the shipping process is already tracked, but if the error rate is anything like airports and checked luggage, I can see why someone might want this. Although, I suppose if the actual ships have internet service, then airtags may be good enough even in this case.
- daneel_w 4y agoTracking of shipping containers does sound like a reasonable fit, yes. Oceanic buoys for scientific research, where satellite cover applies, would be another good example.
- sumtechguy 4y agoHaving worked in that type of space. We tried for years to get some sort of thing to work like this for shipping containers. As the space is huge and a decent ROI. The problem we had was battery life and endurance. At best we were getting 2-3 years in really good conditions. For some items that works great. But for others not so much. Usually very high/low temps and stacked under 10 other containers and 0 signal and bashed around in a shipping yard. You can not put it in the container as it degrades the signal too much. On the outside it is a harsh env. Tough space to work in. There are companies out there that have other solutions that worked better than what we had.
- grishka 4y ago> You can not put it in the container as it degrades the signal too much. On the outside it is a harsh env. My first thought was to put the device itself inside but the antenna outside. But I suppose there are reasons why that won't work either?
- residualmind 4y agoscrolling is wonky
- amelius 4y agoTitle could say "Swarm M138 1kbps Satellite Modem for IoT"
- yootyootr 4y agowith latency up to 1 hour
- denysonique 4y agoWe are in 2023, yet web developers still think that hijacking scrolling functionality of a web browser is a good thing.
- qup 4y agoYou spelled "web designers" wrong.
- traverseda 4y agoSeems like Mini-PCI Express is a bit overkill for this, wonder why they chose that form factor instead of like direct-serial (for embedding) with a usb-serial for all the rest.
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoIt is using direct 3.3V serial for embedding, the mini PCIe is just used for the ubiquitous, effective, cheap, and low profile connector. It doesn't actually have any PCIe lanes, it has power, ground, the aforementioned 3.3V serial, a transmit/receive indicator, and a single (!) GPIO. I'm not 100% sure, but I suspect if you tried to plug it into an mSATA slot either it or the laptop would be damaged.
- LeifCarrotson 4y agoEdit: Here's the pinout of the Swarm modem: https://i.imgur.com/VQvDrEa.png https://i.imgur.com/VQvDrEa.png Here's the pinout of a mini PCIe card: https://i.imgur.com/YJIyJ86.png https://i.imgur.com/YJIyJ86.png And here's the pinout of mini PCIe/mSATA (numbered from bottom to top, which makes it slightly more challenging to compare): https://i.imgur.com/7yL3FW4.png https://i.imgur.com/7yL3FW4.png The ground connections all line up, and the 3.0 to 5.0V input, 1000 mA rated VDD on the Swarm is connected to 3V3. The Swarm UART is connected to REFCLK+ and REFCLK- on the PCIe bus, and the GPIO drives LED_WWAN. Should be no problem! I suppose that it would be really cool if they provided an I2C/2-wire/SMB communication interface on pins 30 and 32 so hypothetically you could connect it to a computer.
- wolrah 4y ago> wonder why they chose that form factor instead of like direct-serial Because MiniPCIe is a common formfactor for cellular modems, so this could be swapped in to existing devices with no hardware changes and minimal software changes. The slot carries not only a lane of PCIe but also a channel of USB 2.0 and SIM connections. Most cellular modems entirely ignore the PCIe and just use it in USB mode, which I assume this is doing as well. Personally I'd have chosen M.2 as MiniPCIe is outdated, but I also would not at all be surprised to find that the industrial IoT world they're targeting has kept using the deprecated standard because some major vendor got a great deal on MiniPCIe connectors when the mainstream computing world switched to M.2. Considering how many devices designed well after the introduction of MicroUSB or even USB-C I still come across with MiniUSB connectors I feel like that's a common thing in the niche computing device world, intentionally and knowingly making new things using the obsolete connector to save a few cents per unit.
- Tepix 4y agoSwarm was bought by SpaceX a couple of years ago. I hope we get some affordable alternatives that provide enough bandwidth for 1-2 detailed weather reports per day soon. I can't believe Iridium Go is still the best option.
- rich_sasha 4y agoMaybe I'm just paranoid but coupled to a GPS sensor, seems like a stalker's wet dream.
- qup 4y agoSure, but it's easy to be a stalker these days. This has up to 2 hour latency, 25 packets/day, and other pretty serious restrictions that make it probably a bad choice, although definitely a viable one.
- strangattractor 4y agoNot to stray off topic does anybody know anything about Beidu SMS service? How would this compare to Swarm? They have integrated into their GPS satellites. https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/beidou-navigation-satellite-system-first-to-provide-sms-service/ https://www.communicationstoday.co.in/beidou-navigation-sate...
- sangnoir 4y agoI can't wait til my smart TV ships with this modem; it won't even nag me into connecting it to the internet before it can harvest my watching habits and GPS location /s
- alexose 4y agoThis is likely competing with the Iridium 9603 modem, which offers relatively inexpensive service for their Short Burst Data protocol. If you're interested in this stuff, I highly recommend the RockBLOCK line of products from Rock7. It's only about $200, with around $20/month for service. I've used this for a few projects, and I've been really happy with the service. I even helped write a nodejs driver for it (https://github.com/dudewheresmycode/node-iridium-sbd https://github.com/dudewheresmycode/node-iridium-sbd).
- jandrese 4y agoIs Omnitracs still around? They had a very similar data model for trucking companies. I seem to recall they were quite a bit more expensive, and the terminals were much larger.