Send SMS with FiPy via LTE-M1 control plane

[X-Ryl]

Hi,

I'm impatient to receive my FiPy. During that time, I've read the documentation about LTE M1. I'm unable to find how to use the control plane's features in the documentation (I'm speaking about Control plane CIoT EPS optimization in R.13 and R.14.
Is the FiPy only limited to IP over LTE (what's called User plane in the standard) ?

Do you have any plan to support sending/receiving SMS ? That's a feature that's a must have for me because:

1. It's available everywhere (cross operators/countries)
2. Everyone know about SMS and it's easy to explain
3. It allows an IoT device to wake-up any user even if she has no application installed or running on her smartphone.

[Andy_N.]

@jmarcelino
ok, thx for this answer! Maybe i shoud introduce you into what my project is and you can tell me what the easiest way would be to implement this. In general i can say i want so send data from a Sensor to anywhere where i can catch the information from and i want so see it everywhere. This is what the IoT is for... ?.

I don´t know realy much about programming, cellular network and internet protocols so my first idea was to send a sms or email. Now i know ist possible, but just with other providers or with detour.

In my opinion it good to be independent as much as possible.
I would like to use the internet via cellularnetwork . Thats why i chosed the GPY. The board can send from anywhere over LTE-NB-IoT. I hope in the near future i can put my sim-card inside the GPY and connect to the Internet.
So this is the way i´ll send my data. Could this work?! :S
But how to recieve and which transfer method would be good for sending via internet?

Today i tried sending data with MQTT via WLAN. The example from https://www.hackster.io/bucknalla/mqtt-micropython-044e77 worked very good with my GPY! I also have seen that i can open my own MQTT-Server with https://mosquitto.org/ . Do you know: Would this also work with the LTE-module in the future?
Is there a better solution you can recommend me? Maybe some thing with FTP- or MYSQL_Server(to heavy?)?!

Thank you very much!

Andy

[jmarcelino]

Many operators are still working on their plans so you may see Cat M1 soon in Germany.

What you get with NB-IoT will depend on your carrier, some will get the data onto a dashboard/network server of their own (very much like LoRa and Sigfox) others will give a (usually limited) UDP connection.

In any case sending e-mails requires TCP protocol so that's not likely to be possible in NB-IoT - at least not directly.

Keep in mind it is possible to send SMSs using any of the other LPWAN protocols we support already (LoRa, Sigfox) and service like Twilio. If there is interest we can produce an example that does this.

[Andy_N.]

@jmarcelino Tanks for you fast answer! Because sms is not going to work in Germany i need an other solution. NB-IoT is still running here and in the near future there will be the missing chapter 6.2.2.6.2 NB-IoT in your documentation. Would i be able to send E-Mails with that connection? Or do i need to use one of the cloudservices like Blynk to send information and data via internet?

Thx

[jmarcelino]

Hi Andy,

Thanks for the query. Please be aware that even for SMS our module only works with LTE Cat M1 networks, it does not work with LTE (non-M) networks I'm saying this because I see you're writing from a .de domain as there is no commercial LTE Cat M1 network in Germany.

While we will support it at some point in the near future I've not heard how carriers actually work/bill for SMS in Cat M1.

The priority in our roadmap is stability (inc setting the LTE modem correctly in deepsleep) , more options, adding debug and extra info (IMEI, ICCID) and biggest support for NB-IoT .

NB-IoT is already deployed in Germany so that should be useful for you, however it's a very different technology and it doesn't support SMS.

[Andy_N.]

Hi,
I also need to send sms with the GPY. Is it already possible? Or do we need to wait for a new firmware?
Are you going to plan an examplecode for sms-sending in your documentation? How long to wait for it?

An other question: There´s a example code for the LTE-Modul in you documentation. It looks very easy. Doesn´t need the Controller the pincode for my Sim-Card? Must the password be erased? Is there a solution with pincode?

Thx

[jmarcelino]

@x-ryl
There is no limitation to IP, it’s just that implementing IP was more of a priority.

We do plan to support SMS in our Cat M1 firmware.