Its a Mini-PCI card with a serial UART, that could be used in a USB cradle (their dev kit has one).
Data rate is very low (1 kbps) but sufficient for telemetry data… and possibly enough for Fusion SIM?
Obviously, it could potentially be used directly via serial but being able to configure the peplink to use it for specific things (telemetry data… possibly fusion sim?) would be very interesting.
Can you get it working in linux on USB?
If so should be possible to get it working on say the 20x over usb with peplink’s support.
Worse case we build some sort of usb bridge in between the swarm and the peplink that presents a generic usb modem.
You can remotely map a sim to a cellular module using fusionsim, but you have to have an internet connection to establish the remote serial connection between the simback and the modem. Using Swarm IOT would be that internet path. Once the remotesim is connected then the cellular module could work as if the sim were local.It would also allow remote access to the unit, in the case of no cellular coverage, you could scan and diagnosis.
But my point is that you might as well just use a normal roaming SIM card as the ‘ignition’ modem rather than the swarm modem. A normal modem will be cheaper and infinitely more bandwidth.
Remote access over a 1kbps connection would take about 3 days to load the web admin page…
Ok you have me interested what plan is this? [quote=“Jake_W, post:3, topic:43399”]
330Mb/month multi network roaming sim for much less than $5/month
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I am starting to agree that perhaps @bryn.loftus as well as myselfs plan for FusionSim over Swarm may be too slow.
However I do now have an additional idea for Swarm.
If peplink were to support swarm over usb , then for example a 20x with a LORA module could upload sensor data even in areas with no cellular coverage. That sounds pretty exciting to me.
Also I’d like to see the swarm modem integrated to support remote commands , like the sms control does. This would be great for devices where the sim card in there is not responding to sms commands or does not have sms enabled.
I could sell you data at this price and still make money…
Generally you should be able to buy EU/USA roaming sims for < $5/GB. They are SIM cards that can roam among various different network operators (AT&T, T-Mobile, Verizon etc).
So a great option to use as an ignition sim for injecting a cheap unlimited data sim for the bulk of the data.
In terms of using Swarm for telemetry or remote access, I’m not sure how useful that would be. Why would you be using a Balance20X for collecting Telemetry data that can be sent over a 1kbps connection? Something like an ESP32 would be much more appropriate.
You could use it to send SMS style commands, but if the router is in such a mess that it can’t even receive SMS, I’m not convinced that rebooting it remotely via a Swarm command is going to improve the situation
It’s hard to predict every scenario that I might be able to remotely fix a cellular issue.
It could be unchecking a band, changing an apn, resetting a cellular module ,or rebooting the device.
I still like the idea to remote in via alternate methods.
Hopefully swarm will also have increased bandwidth in the future.
I do agree some projects may be better suited for esp/pi vs the 20x, I was just trying to think further along applications specific to pepwave and alternate connectivity other then cellular.
