Electron - super cheap cell connectivity

[Shawn Wilson]

There's a kickstarter for Electron, a dev kit for connecting projects by cell.  The really cool thing is the super cheap data plan with no contracts, Canada included.  $3/month for 1Mb data, $.99 each Mb thereafter.  You wouldn't want to do video or even images with it (unless maybe you only took a few pictures in extraordinary circumstances, like a break-in), but 1Mb translates to about 20,000 messages per month.  Looks like about $30 per board.  I don't know if you could put multiple boards on a single plan.

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/sparkdevices/spark-electron-cellular-dev-kit-with-a-simple-data

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Shawn Wilson
www.glassgiant.com
@glassgiant

[Adam Cox]

I backed this yesterday. And backed the new Pebble watch earlier in the week. Kickstarter is becoming dangerous to my budget.

I got my Spark Core in the mail yesterday and preordered a Spark Photon that should arrive in May. The price drop to $19 for a wifi microcontroller makes a lot of projects much more financially attractive.

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[Chris McDonald]

It's more like $60 a board. The 2G option early bird was $30 and is now $40. I'm guessing the 2G would be GSM putting you on the Rogers network. Atleast with 3G you might get on the Aliant or Eastlink networks. 

There are other 3g chipsets that could be used with there sim cards when they get to market. 

On a related note the ESP8266 can be had for as little as $3 and has pretty good range on Wifi. The open firmware is still under rapid development and I found it to be a bit buggy. Its different every day so many of the bugs might be worked out by now.

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[Real O'Neil]

I backed the Pebble for the early bird when Adam posted it on Facebook.  I think Adam is becoming dangerous to my budget ;)

I'm rather surprised they're saying Canada.  Our wireless market is a hot mess of protectionist rigidity.  I wonder if it's confirmed or that's their intention.

[Adam Cox]

Spark has set themselves up as a carrier so the SIM cards are issued by them and they have set up roaming agreements. As Shawn mentioned they are cheap but very low data. Nice thing is that there is no contract or hassle of dealing with the local carriers. Their coverage is USA, Canada and what appears to be most of Europe. So you could have your project roam anywhere in those areas.

[Chris McDonald]

Canadian cell tower map:

http://www.ertyu.org/steven_nikkel/cancellsites.html

Its based on the Industry Canada licence data. 

East link as pretty coverage in the province. Looks slightly better than rogers, who have also improved there coverage since I last looked. Newfoundland is still 90% Bell only. 

There are roaming agreements already in place that allows some data only sims to be used in Canada. Sparkfun sells a $60 sim card that gives you something like 1GB over 6 months that gets throttled beyond the 1GB. They say it works in Canada. 

I would be nice to know which carriers they have the roaming agreements with.

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Chris McDonald <lord...@gmail.com> wrote:

[Shawn Wilson]

You need to kickstart a 12 step program for crowdfunding addicts.

Whoops, my mistake on the board price, but the cheap plan, for me, is the exciting part.  Not that I have a project in mind yet, though model rocket recovery might be possible if my kids start to get into the bigger ones.

I picked up a few esp8266s, but haven't played with them yet.  I've seen a number of basement flood, water conditioner salt level, sump pump water level and garage door sensors that would be useful.  I had planned on using nrf24l01, but I think the wifi might be the way to go, especially as I'd like to get alerts outside of the house. 

On Thu, Feb 26, 2015 at 12:56 PM, Chris McDonald <lord...@gmail.com> wrote: