Weird issue, the SIM800L v2 takes 5+ minutes to find signal, but if I unplug the 5v source and plug it back in, it pops up immediately. Any ideas what could cause this?
Is this first time power/ on at any new location, or every time the unit has been powered off ?
If it’s at a new location, a longer discovery & registration phase is usual (5 mins is a bit long), but the registration needs to go back to the central database, and is checked for its validity etc. Subsequent registration and handoff at the same cell is much faster.
Remember the SIM800 is a 2G module. It won’t be too long before it won’t connect & register at all.
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Everytime the unit has been powered off.
Is there a newer model that supports 3g?
In some regions, 3G only has anther couple of years,
my latest designs all use 3G/4G modems now... SIM7000 series family.
There are 5G modules, but theyre too expensive at the moment.
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I've used a SIM800H and it usually connected within 30 seconds. Maybe once or twice it would have a hard time finding a signal, but that was it.
As to networks, I live in the great lakes area of the USA and the 2g network I was using was shut down 9 months ago. Long before the network was shut down, I moved to a SIM5320, a 3g module, but used my 2g sim card. This worked until the 2g network was shut down. I was using the T-Mobile network. When the 2g network was shut down (and T-Mobile was the last to shut down 2g in my area) I went to a local T-Mobile store to get a new sim card for my SIM5320 and they informed me that T-Mobile 3g network would be shut down in another year or two.
The 4g network is current and will probably work for another ten years before it's shut down. The 5g network is coming online now.
I say this because I feel bad for anyone that buys a SIM800, or any other 2g product. You are buying a dead horse, and there are lots of them for sale. Buy a 3g product, and you've bought something with a short lifetime. Need to be looking at 4g and nothing less, but the options out there are limited, and I don't know how good the libraries for them are.
Randy
Oh that's good to know! Thank you.
Honestly I only got it because it was cheap and the use case I have for it, chances are I'll have to buy replacements, so I didn't want to be out a ton of money for a community project. However, I've been seeing a lot of articles lately about 2g networks being shut down and was thinking of switching over to the next step up, but with it having such a generic model of SIM, I couldn't really find the different model numbers of them to research the differences. Is there a best place to purchase them that has the various models? If there's one in the $40 range that would be good, the SIM7000 is a bit out of the budget.
As @revolt_randy said, the 53xx series are good, and 3G compatible.
Check the version for your carriers/region as each version is setup for a specific compliancevregime.
I saw that one, but couldn't find any in stock, what's the best place to shop for modules since Amazon doesn't seem to have a lot of stock options?
I’ve bought a lot of all models from TinySine
TinyOs Shop
Thank you, but their pricing is only $5 different than the 7000 series, so I just ordered the 7000 off of Amazon. It would be nice if there was a 3G model in the $40 range, but this will do as a trial until I can source something cheaper.
Sorry I was away for a couple of days.... sounds like you've made a choice already, but I will share my experience with you anyways, maybe it will help in some way....
I started out with an Adafruit FONA 800 shield, and used the supplied Ting SIM card. Ting is a reseller of the T-Mobile network, they offered a tiered pricing plan. X amount of calls, X amount of txt msg, X amount of data for $7 a month, when you exceed those limits, you go to the next tier, which was like $10 a month.
I then moved to the Adafruit FONA 3G, and kept using my Ting SIM card. So it was a 3G module working on the 2G network. When that was shutdown, I checked with T-Mobile and got a $15/month, unlimited txt, unlimited calls, SIM card. AT&T wanted $25 a month for same service. Since I only use SMS txt messaging, I will be going back to Ting soon, since it's the cheapest. The FONA 3g uses the SIM5320A module.
Someone on tindie from Russia is selling what looks like a close copy of the FONA for around $50. On ebay, you can find even cheaper breakout boards for the SIM5320A, but documentation for these devices is scarce.
With both of those devices, you got the Adafruit library to use which works well.
When you move up to the 4g SIM7000 series, there is the Botletics SIM7000, and the person behind that device extending the Adafruit library to handle the 7xxx series of modules. Here again, you can find cheap ebay breakout boards for these as well.
As @lastchancename said, you need to know what versions work for what area you are in. Generally, the last letter defines the area where it works. For example -7600A - North America, 7600E - European Union, 7600C - China...
Just wanted to share....
Randy
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I built the 800 off of a Supersim, as I needed data. I can confirm that I do not have this issue after porting my code to the SIM7000. It's significantly faster. Like 2 seconds to connect to the network and perform a http call, which is awesome. The upgraded library is pretty nice, I had my code ported in 10 minutes. Botletics was the one I went with, it's the one I said was $5 more than the 5320. I did end up doing research before and figured out the A model of the Botletics was the one I needed.
The breakout boards I didn't know about and they appear to be significantly cheaper, are they basically just knock offs? Would they carry any certification?
@ilikediy Glad to hear things went well with the Botletics
The cheaper breakout boards lack some things, from what I can see. When you buy an Adafruit, or Botletics, product, your buying something designed to work 'out of the box'. They just work with what ever Arduino your using. The breakout boards lack these sort of things.
It's like this: the UNO is a 5vdc device. The Arduino Zero is a 3.3vdc device. Cell modems I've looked at work on 1.8vdc. So for a 5v UNO to talk to a 1.8v cell module, you need to convert the voltage between the two. I think the cheap breakout boards lack level shifters to convert the voltages... So you kinda got to know that stuff.
When I moved from an UNO to a Zero, I bought a cheap e-bay clone to try it out. It worked for 3 months and died. Spent the money on an Adafruit Metro M0 and it works.
You get what you pay for, stick with the good stuff....
Randy
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