These are based on notes I’ve been making from Feb. 2020
What covers the « from $2 per device per month » subscription fee?
Access to the Cloud functions? These appear to be free at the moment. Pure guess at the moment.
What SIM card is provided in the tracker ?
Orange Hologram LTE: No use in the UK. We use Vodafone V-sim NB-IOT which now seems to work, once the firmware is updated.
What LTE chip is used (brand and SKU)? As they cover different LTE bands, and it might not work the same way in different countries.
QUECTEL BG96. There’s an estimote JS function you need to use that sets the environment to a mode that works.
What battery is used? Which capacity?
NU 443450P 3.7V 800 mAh. It is Chinese and google will find it for you.
What charging speed the battery accepts?
2.96Wh (see above)
Can we push the data on our own TCP endpoint?
Sort of. You use their own cloud-based data structures to store the data from the beacon then call your TCP endpoint from your estimate cloud account app. That’s the theory I’m working on anyway.
Can you change the device shape / design for production?
No idea. The board is the same shape as the package so not out of the box.
Can you add a loud buzzer to the board (like the Nordic Thingy91)?
The JS function used to switch modem modes is (at the time of writing) is modem.setTech(modem.Tech.XXXX) where XXXX is one of a set of values. The current setting that seems to work is GSM_LTE.
Just got an email from Estimote after 2 months… they didn’t answer any of the questions and wrote:
Unfortunately, we are out of stock with our LTE beacons, and we do not plan to manufacture it in the near future.
We’ve withdrawn from selling LTE beacons at the moment, because we’re focusing on deploying our new [Workplace Safety Wearables](https://estimote.com/wearable/) - contact tracing & social distancing product.
If anything changes, we can keep you posted!
We are very sorry for the inconvenience.
I’ve been playing with many trackers the last months and specially the BG96, and none of them worked consistently… I suspect that’s the reason they might drop this product too.
Hope they bring it back though, as there is no serious alternative so far.
Pierre, Many thanks for this. I’ve been playing with their products (none too seriously) for a while now. They’re still advertising (24/07/2020) what looks like the LTE beacon on their web site. I agree that there’s nothing else like it on the market. I’m using the LTE to explore more of Finite state machine within JS as an academic exercise, as I’m now retired. I feel sorry for those who’ve invested in this business’s products as they’re not really able to deliver. As an example, the LTE beacon should a cornerstone of their products not something they should drop on a whim. Still, we’ll see what happens next. Bon Voyage!
John
I’m Miriam from Estimote Team. I’m sorry for the inconvenience regarding stopped production. You can check our article here about AI Beacons, which could replace deprecated LTE beacons. We are hoping to introduce this device in next months.
Miriam,
johnroster here. Thanks for this. Just to let you know I’ve pre-ordered the AI Beacons dev pack and, if Pierre is still interested I’d suggest he does the same. It would be great if the LTE beacons new API documentation could be made available at some point to find out what’s new.
Yes, would love to order it, but the announcement was from Aug 6th 2019, it’s been a year and Miriam just wrote: “We are hoping to introduce this device in next months.”…