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Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

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Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#121

Post by SergeAx »

skykooler wrote: post #44
MuffinFlavored wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What might somebody (or some company) use this for? 192 bytes * 750 packets = 144000 bytes per month at what speed/latency?

I could see this being very useful for scientific beacons, for example to track ocean currents or bird migrations. The latter currently use cellular connections, but can only track birds through areas where reception is present.

If I was asked to engineer such a tracker, I would definitely buffer data inside to flush when connected to celluar network. Not always real time, but much more useful.

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#122

Post by dfc »

reaperducer wrote: post #21
eterevsky wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Weather station or any kind of remote sensor that you want to keep in some remote area.

Silence sense and FCC-required logging for a mountaintop broadcast transmitter.

What is "silence sense"?

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#123

Post by cowsandmilk »

SergeAx wrote: post #119
mmazing wrote: post #105

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not only bandwidth limited, it's message count as well. The $60/yr plan allows for 750 _messages_ per month. Up to 3000 messages per month if you stack 4 plans together. So on the base plan, you're limited to ~1 message per hour if you spread it out across the month.

> ~1 message per hour How so? 6 messages per day is one message per 4 hours.

24 * 31 = 744, so one message per hour is just under the 750 limit. This is probably not a coincidence.

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#124

Post by qchris »

mirashii wrote: post #100

Huh, for some reason, I thought that the FCC would fine and regulate this company into oblivion after their unauthorized launch stunt. Looks like that didn't quite happen the way I expected. https://spacenews.com/swarm-ceo-talks-past-mistakes-future-g...

It drives me up a wall that they got off basically consequence-free for that--I'm guess they probably made up the fine in reduced time cost spent on authorization proceedings anyway. "Move fast and break things" isn't a great motto anyway, but it's especially bad when those things are floating around in orbit.

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#126

Post by girvo »

jjtheblunt wrote: post #101
girvo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It was purchased by SpaceX last year, but uses their own hardware.

No? SpaceX purchased it, so it's theirs now. They may for instance be using shared ground network hardware and software post acquisition. Do you have reason to think otherwise?

I can’t talk about some stuff unfortunately, we’re partnered with them, but they’re not using any of that yet as far as we have been told.

We’re eagerly waiting for them to, as it should increase what we can do with their product!

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#127

Post by girvo »

panick21_ wrote: post #78
girvo wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No. It was purchased by SpaceX last year, but uses their own hardware.

They will defiantly unify this stuff more over time.

Definitely, it’s on the roadmap I believe, but today they haven’t. We use Swarm in production for some of our remote industrial IoT deployments

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#128

Post by isomorphic »

dfc wrote: post #122
reaperducer wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Silence sense and FCC-required logging for a mountaintop broadcast transmitter.

What is "silence sense"?

I'm speculating, but certain FCC licenses require you to transmit without significant gaps on your licensed frequencies or be fined. (The theory being that others could be making better use of your frequency since you aren't using it.) If your transmission gear goes down for whatever reason, you want to notify the FCC before others do. E.g.,

https://www.insideradio.com/free/fcc-slaps-birach-broadcasti...

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#129

Post by girvo »

pmorici wrote: post #118
ge96 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Curious how it compares to Iridium, I've seen those with Sparkfun

Order of magnitude less expensive.

Inmarsat is surprisingly more competitive to Swarm than we expected, but man it is difficult to get passed all the bullshit resellers, which is where Swarm is way easier. But for our use cases Inmarsat has been a better fit right now, though we use both on our board depending on the deployment: if we don’t need as much bandwidth and are okay with the black out times where we’re not covered by Swarm, it’s great

Re: Swarm – Low cost, global satellite connectivity for IoT

#130

Post by girvo »

LinuxBender wrote: post #55
themgt wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In-Q-Tel, the venture capital arm of the CIA, lists Swarm Technologies as one of their startups. I bet the military/intelligence community has all sorts of ideas!

Not to mention that people could have internet connected crap without even knowing it. No way to block it using PiHole, pfsense or other local routers and access points.

NB-IoT or CAT-M1/LTE-M are a far better fit for this frankly.
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