from Hacker News

Coyote Board - A 2G GSM Shield for Arduino

by franklovecchio on 10/31/13, 12:08 AM with 19 comments

• by beardicus on 10/31/13, 2:01 AM

  This looks fairly neat. The "don't pay for a plan" part is a bit odd though... as far as I can tell you're only getting a year of free low-bandwidth data, and after that it'll cost you.

  I queried the creator on kickstarter... he said $3 a month would be a worst case cost for said connectivity after your initial year is up.

  Perhaps more importantly, he indicated that it would be possible to not use their server as a middleman, but that they need to get their analytics right before allowing that. Currently going through their server allows them to maintain sane data rates, apparently.

  Personally, I couldn't find a one-off GSM data only SIM for less than $8 a month in my searches... even at multiple year prepay... so this sounds like a pretty good deal. I'm maybe more interested in just the cheap dumb pipe option, but really their "middleware" server does sound handy.

• by discardorama on 10/31/13, 1:01 AM

  Since it's not clear from the description: do you pay for sending the data or not? If not, whose network does it use, and why are they allowing use of their network for free?

• by snom380 on 10/31/13, 5:12 AM

  I wish they would explain what this GSM shield does apart from the one year subscription and connection to their own platform?

  There are several unlocked GSM shields and modules available with working libraries and tutorials for under $50, using the exact same GSM module (SIM900): http://dx.com/s/Sim900?category=499

• by codezero on 10/31/13, 12:17 AM

  It's not entirely clear in the description, but it sounds like data is sent to 2lemetry and then from 2lemetry it's sent to your server via POST.

  It's too bad that you can't just send data directly, but I guess this probably means that 2lemetry will require specific structured data and will limit requests. They say the limit is TBD which is pretty vague and not very inspiring.

• by petersand on 10/31/13, 5:48 AM

  Here's an Arduino (clone) board with a GPRS option, flash memory for logging data between transmissions, and some other features for remote data acquisition: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/386717175/sodaq-a-lego-l...

• by oceanplexian on 10/31/13, 6:14 AM

  Embedded development is not like web development. Sometimes these things might stay in a remote location sending telemetry data for a few years. I'm surprised, this being GSM, that they don't put a slot on the board as an optional add-on.

  Are there technical reasons for this, or is it just designed to shut out competition?

• by gluxon on 10/31/13, 2:52 AM

  I always miss my bus in the morning. I've had the idea to stuff a remote tracker in one of the bus seats for a while... this makes it possible.

• by jimmcslim on 10/31/13, 3:04 AM

  So you can't put your own SIM in this and ping your own server?