Reply To: Connecting SIM7080 to New Thingspeak

A bit of shame since I’ve had some simple devices working reliably against it since 2013.

Also unfortunately, “the real world” is that testing is against a matrix – release ModularSensors xx.xx against thingspeak – so I think you are on the leading edge for ModularSensors Publisher v mqtt3.thingspeak  🙂

Taking a scan of their  mqtt3,  it seems like they are suggesting you create new devices when moving to their mqtt3  – so at a GUESS, that suggests they have a whole new server architecture and subscription management. So be great if you share results – stuff that doesn’t work is as valuable as stuff that does work.

When looking at a new service, its also useful to consider what it takes to prove how well it works  and how far you want to go.

Typically new development goes in stages a) protoyping b) integration testing c) reliability/stability testing.

MMW has a lot of capability, and very mature,  but in the “reliability testing” of  Mayfly 0.5 and Digi LTE CAT-M1 modems, from a debug analysis, there is a possible timing  problem with the tinyGSM device driver  https://github.com/EnviroDIY/ModularSensors/issues/396 – which suggests that if the MMW servers response where a lot faster, faster than the current fastest 1.2seconds, it might break the current deployments with Digi LTE-CAT-M1 XB3-C-A2-UT-001.   Its what happens in testing sometimes.

I’ve had very good experience so far with “reliability/stability testing” of ModularSensors 0.32.2/(Mayfly 0.5+ Digi LTE-CAT-M1), but the server response through the cellphone network is pretty slow,  at its fastest 1.2seconds.

For mqtt3.thingspeak you are back to “a)prototyping”.

For  another wireless protocol LoRa/Thingsnetwork,  with max payload of 51bytes, which seems unlikely that it could work with MMW API, I’m checking out Arduino.cc mqtt/IoT or Adafruit mqtt as having plans  for smaller devices.  So I would describe I’m trying to figure how to prototype that interface.

I should note – https://github.com/EnviroDIY/ModularSensors/releases/tag/v0.32.2 doesn’t identify what features work with new Mayfly 1.0A3 boards. The modem SIM7080 , isn’t identified as being supported yet, or tested with ModularSensors – though as its open source we can all see what’s in the software. I guess, user test at their own risk.

I have only done minimal testing on Mayfly 1.0A3, as its typical for organizations to announce what they support and regression testing. My testing, is with a student capstone project as a standalone sensor so far, though they should get to cellular LTE integration soon.  On paper analysis I’ve identified a potential comms issues with Mayfly1.0A3  – see https://github.com/EnviroDIY/EnviroDIY_Mayfly_Logger/issues

I’m making ModularSensors detect in runtime whether its Mayfly 0.5 or 1.0 – so the user/program doesn’t have to compile for one or the other.