Hello everybody,
before I order my first Dash, I’ll make sure the product fits my needs.
My goal is to put various autonomous solar data collection stations. The data collected would be the water level of several streams distant from each other. Not being a programmer and hardly setup a wireless WI-FI with Arduino, I am looking for a low cost cellular module since the goal is to have several modules in the future, it must be simple, work with libraries (if needed) without a headache!
so here is a list of my requirements:
1-Hardware must be able to work with a battery and solar charge.
2-Send data to the web every 30 mins and deep sleep between each (what is the consumption in mA?)
3-Operate in 5V for sensors & have analog inputs
4-To be able to recover the data easily from the Dashboard to an external site (no login for viewers)
5-Maintenance-free, must be reliable and restart all by itself if the voltage is recharging (In case the battery discharges too much and recharges to an acceptable voltage)
6-Must restart alone if it crashes
7-It must be easy to transmit the data using the least traffic as mentioned in this example (SerialCloud.println ()).
8-Since the project will grow, can we use multiple SIM cards on the same data plan (located in Canada)? Each station will use about 2mb per month and a total of 40 stations would be realistic in the long run ($ 2 * 40 = $ 80 could be too expensive VS $ 48 for the 100mb plan).
Is the Dash a good solution or should I look for another product? Thank you for enlightening me on the subject