Hologram Blog

1nce [0] and Hologram [1] offer low cost SIM cards for these type of applications. 1nce for example charges €10 for 500MB of data which lasts 10 years. Assuming you are economical with the data it's €1 a year, which is a very appealing price point. Even if you need 500MB a year that's still less than €1 a month. Hologram charge by the MB (although I'm not sure exactly how much as their pricing page isn't fully transparent), with a 70¢ a month charge per SIM card. I think they offer a free SIM card with a certain amount of data a month free (maybe 1MB) if you just want 1 SIM card. [0] https://1nce.com/ [1] https://www.hologram.io/

Twilio has their SuperSIM (https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim) for these use cases but the pricing might be too high for what you're looking for. There's also Hologram (https://www.hologram.io/). I'd try looking for IoT data providers (rather than cellular ones). I've also personally worked with these guys before and they are legit: https://www.zipitwireless.com/

The senior engineers should have been more honest ("screw you and your pet language, we won't be using this garbage here") instead of getting the author to run various useless side quests. This is the company he is talking about: https://www.hologram.io/blog/why-we-dont-hate-php They love PHP and Python. Good for them, I don't like those languages but why would I get a job there and try to get them to use a language with a pretty much completely opposite philosophy? It would be like getting a job at a vegan restaurant and suggest they should have wagyu beef on their menu because it's so tasty and everyone loves it.

I was investigating solutions for sensor SMS notifications & the best IoT type SIM plan that I came across was https://www.hologram.io/pricing/flexible-data . $1.50/line per month, $0.19/outbound SMS, data is pricey. If you need more SMS, the next cheapest I've used is RedPocket Mobile-- https://www.ebay.com/itm/2-50-Mo-Red-Pocket-Prepaid-Plan-200-Talk-1000… - $30/yr for 200 voice/1000 texts/200mb per month on T-Mobile's network.

If you're interested in this space, Hologram does the same thing (and appears to have had a head start compared to Twilio): https://hologram.io

How is this different to Hologram[1] or EsEye[2]? Hologram seems to offer an api with as much access as twilio's (data usage report, switching between "networks" (what package you buy, which includes certain countries and pricing...) and monthly payment of a fleet of chips. I'm failing to see the added value of twilio, but the more competency the better! [1]: https://hologram.io/ [2]: https://www.eseye.com/

https://particle.io and https://hologram.io have almost worldwide availability for SIM's designed for this. There are probably older less-hip suppliers as well.

Hmm... I was seriously ready to scoff at this when I saw a link to att.com in a show hn, but I'm not so sure this is scoff-worthy... It's (basically) $25 per GB across a fleet + $1 per device per month. While that sounds bad for anyone comparing it to a individual device plan it's way better than anything I've personally seen for the 'IoT' plans before. The closest I've ever seen before was https://hologram.io/pricing/, but this seems to be better unless you use less than 2 KB a month (lol, no, you don't). Now, does anyone know of a module I can use on this without paying out the ass for it? (Seriously, I want like 50 of em as long as I can get them for under ~$20.)

Hologram | Backend Engineering, Full-Stack Engineer, Demand Generation, Marketing | Chicago, IL, Relocation Possible | Onsite At Hologram (https://hologram.io/), our mission is to build the platform creating connected products, including hardware (the Hologram Dash and SIM cards), connecting to the Hologram cellular network, and web applications for managing devices and data. We are venture backed and growing fast to support our expanding customer base. Our engineering team is truly "full-stack" with everything from low-level embedded C up to React frontend work, and everything in-between. Engineers are welcome to tackle any of these areas. We are hiring in engineer, marketing, and sales in the Chicago area. We are also open to helping relocate candidates from around the country. You can see all our openings on our careers page: https://boards.greenhouse.io/hologram If connecting everything to the internet by building the cellular network of the future sounds as thrilling to you as it does to us, shoot me an email at logan at hologram.io!

Going by Hologram's public pricing, a GNSS "heartbeat" per-minute would cost $4/month on a PAYG model. With tiered contract pricing, I'd expect that to drop to $1/month for a mid/large-sized telematics organisation. https://hologram.io/pricing/

One issue to note is carrier. ATT is now blocking devices that are not on their "approved" list. You may need to go with an alt carrier like Hologram or TMobile: https://www.hologram.io/products/iot-sim-card

GPS modules are dirt cheap, and easy to interface to even an Arduino. The questions to be answered How would you power said device? - Using the vehicle's power should be fairly easy. You would want to mount it under the hood, with the antenna disguised so that it's not screamingly obvious, also doable. How would you transmit the data back to yourself? That is the tricky issue. You'd need some sort of IOT service to do so across more than the range of LORA beacons. I've not done it, and this is just the result of a google search, but Hologram seems to offer plans cheap enough to make it a few dollars per month, if you are sparse with your broadcasts back to your server. https://www.hologram.io/pricing/flexible-data What will you do if your car is stolen? Do you really think the police will be able to recover it in time before it is stripped?

Well, i'm not counting the phone (pretty much ANY tracker requires a phone/computer to view results) which I assume is a given. I'm specifically speaking about the phone PLAN which is where the real money goes. A phone service plan will cost $20/mo in the US easily, so thats $250/yr forever. At this point, tracking luggage/bicycles isnt cost effective...the tracker starts to become more expensive than the tracked. The AirTags are awesome because ANY phone creates a mesh for them to broadcast. UPDATE: per sister comment, see https://www.hologram.io/pricing/flexible-data

>i'm expecting an extra $20/mo for a phone plan I'm sure you can get prepaid/IOT plans for less, eg. https://www.hologram.io/pricing/flexible-data

No https://www.hologram.io/blog/what-is-an-esim-and-how-is-it-used#:~:tex… > The eSIM (embedded SIM) is a small chip soldered directly to a board inside a device

Was going to post the same thing. I wonder how the two compare. Pricing-wise, seems like Twilio has higher fixed but lower usage costs: https://www.twilio.com/docs/iot/supersim | Starting at $2 per active Super SIM per month. | Data Usage - Starting at $0.10 / MB. https://hologram.io/pricing/ | $1 per device per month + $0.38 / MB. Of course these prices depend on device volume. Twilio may be able to offer lower costs because of their scale, but perhaps Hologram can provide a better user experience because this is the only thing they do.

You probably want to look into M2M(machine to machine) plans if you don't plan on using standard telephone features with your device and just want data. A lot of companies offer this service these days. For example(random googling first result): https://hologram.io/pricing/ is offering M2M sims for $1 per SIM per month + 40 cents per mb.

>But unless mobile carriers start offering very cheap plans for IOT devices (which is in itself unlikely) Like this? https://hologram.io/pricing/ https://www.particle.io/pricing/#cellular-data

Pretty interesting perspective - maybe check out the Hologram Dash which is programmed with the Arduino IDE + has full compatibility with Arduino functions. It includes a cell modem as well: https://hologram.io/dash/

Have you checked https://hologram.io/iot-sim-card/ ?