After reading about the MKRFOX 1200 Arduino with built in Sigfox connectivity and a 2 year subscription for 50 Euros (including VAT and shipping), I ordered one right away and was pleasantly surprised that it arrived only a few days later. This and the following posts document my first impressions and give a basic overview of Sigfox devices, the network, the back end server and their capabilities.
Continue reading The Sigfox Arduino – Part 1 – First Impressions
Back in April I wrote a post about a breakthrough Arduino board with a Sigfox chip bundled with a 2 year network subscription. It has since arrived and a number of posts about how it performs in practice will come soon. In the initial post I wrote that in my opinion that’s where 3GPP network operators have to go as well with NB-IoT to drive adoption. Actually NB-IoT seems to be closer to this goal than I initially thought. In the Netherlands, Sodaq is working on a NB-IoT Arduino shield and has started a Kickstarter campaign to get funding for it.
Continue reading An NB-IoT Shield That Includes A 1 Year T-Mobile NL Subscription
Moving on from the ‘Home Computer Wars’, I bought a copy of ‘iWoz’, Steve Wozniack’s autobiography written in 2006 to find out more about the early computer industry during the 1970’s and 80’s. You can find a good synopsis of the book on Wikipedia so I won’t repeat the exercise here. Instead, as with previous books, I’ve decided to write down some personal impressions.
This is part 2 of my telescope view on how OneM2M works and deals with a number of additional topics. If you haven’t read part 1 I strongly recommend you do this first before continuing here.
Continue reading A Telescope View on How OneM2M Works – Part 2
I’m pretty much done with my introduction series on eSIM Remote Service Provisioing now but there is one important topic still missing that should be mentioned shortly: Downloading virtual SIM cards into an eSIM is not only interesting for consumer devices such as smartphones, tablets, watches, etc. but equally, if not even more, to embedded devices in cars and industrial applications where the device does not directly interact with a user. While the same principles are used for downloading virtual SIMs to such devices, the way this is done is slightly different from what I discussed so far for consumer devices.
Continue reading Embedded-SIM Intro – Part 8 – Consumer vs. M2M
The Internet of Things and Machine to Machine (M2M) communication are not only buzz words in the computing industry today but also in the telecoms sector. In telecoms there is a framework referred to as OneM2M that I’ve come across several times before. However 99% of what I found on the Internet did not bring me any closer to understanding the principles of the framework and how it ties in with cellular networks and NB-IoT. After digging a bit deeper I finally found some resources that helped me to understand what OneM2M actually does and how.
Continue reading A Telescope View on How OneM2M Works – Part 1
Out of curiosity I tend to make a Wifi and cellular network scan when I am at places where I think I might find interesting configurations. When I was recently at a location that deployed Cisco Aironet Wifi Access points I was surprised to find an information element in the beacon frames that contained information about the number of clients connected and the system load (amount of time the access point found the channel busy).
Continue reading Wifi QBSS Load Element Shows Number of Connected Devices
It is obviously a must that any SIM card works in any cellular mobile device. By and large that works pretty smooth today. There is rigorous testing in place and I only know a few cases where SIM cards and devices did not harmonize and software updates were required to fix the issue. In the eSIM world where the user can’t remove the SIM card anymore but downloads a virtual SIM (a Profile) to a mobile device, interoperability is just as important. So how is this done in practice?
Continue reading Embedded-SIM Intro – Part 7 – Interoperability
When the Raspberry Pi came out it was a game changer as for the first time a cheap and easy to use Linux based board with lots of connectivity became available to the masses. Last week I read about a new Arduino board with a Sigfox chip that could be another game changer.
Continue reading An Arduino Board with Sigfox + 2 Years Connectivity for 50 Euros
Wow, this is already part 6 of my introduction series on embedded SIM cards and it’s not going to be the last, there are still a few topics left. Today, a few words about what are referred to as ‘companion’ devices.
Continue reading Embedded-SIM Intro – Part 6 – Companion Devices