SparkFun LTE GNSS Breakout - SARA-R5

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SparkFun LTE GNSS Breakout - SARA-R5 GPS-18031

This board says it comes with a hologram sim card. I am looking to replace some 3g cellular boards I was using that are no longer supported. I primarily need to send and receive txt messages. Does the hologram card that comes with it have an assigned phone number ? Do you know what the cost per txt msg is ?

Thanks

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An IoT SIM card is designed to send and receive data rather than enable voice calls, while its chip stores distinctive information about the device (such as credentials and carrier data, and links the device to the network) - so no, it’s not really a ‘phone’ number, in the traditional sense. More like an IP address, on a cellular network.

The billing for consumers is pay-as-you-go by the MB, so…pretty cheap (text msgs are a few kb) https://www.hologram.io/pricing/flexible-data

Poke around their website for a bit, it’s pretty good :smiley:

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Not sure that will work for me, I assume I need a phone number to send a sms txt message to the device ? E.g. from my contacts store that phone number and send a txt message to the device, e.g. RELAY ON, RELAY OFF, etc

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Just to be clear, I am not looking for voice calls, just to be able to send and receive txt messages, but assume I need a phone number to send txt messages to ?

5

You should be able to use a SIM card from your own carrier as well if they offer service that works for you but would need to contact them for details on how to setup the device on their network.

6

Thanks for the reply, I am currently using a company called Ting. I did some searching and it looks like you can go to hologram a purchase a phone number for $1 a month, data only. I just ordered the board and look forward to trying it.

Thanks

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I think SMS is an add on as well on hologram and they charge by the message. They should be able to confirm that for you though. :slight_smile: