Can you please add a feature to limit the daily data use or the rate of data use that is possible on a SIM? I just incurred a major bill of more than $100 for a few minutes while setting up a cellular router because my laptop saw the connection and started to download something while I was setting up the router. I didn’t even know it had happened until I checked the data use on the router.
Protections of this sort are needed to protect from incidents like this given the relatively high cost of data. I don’t want to have to shut off automatic top up but when the number of top ups required in a few minutes is very high, that should ring alarm bells that trigger action to protect the account.
You can set how much overage to allow for a given SIM. If you use a lot of data very fast we might not be able to shut it off right away but it should catch it within a few minutes and save you some money.
Oops yeah that was a newer version. On your version, it’s on the “Data Plan” tab. Just click on there and scroll down.
I believe it also gives you the option of specifying it at activation time.
Thanks for the update. I would request that this be settable at a group level/organization level to avoid having to set it per device. Also, please indicate the duration in the UI for which this limit is applicable. Assumptions on duration are never good.
I’ll pass your feedback to the product team. For reference, the setting will stay in place unless you change it and it applies on a per billing cycle basis.
anyway to limit SMS messages? my code sent out one SMS from the MKR NB 1500 device but ended up costing me 15 texts. i’m not sure if this is a problem with my board modem or the cellular signal but this is a very expensive text.
Hmm thats a very specific request and not one that I think will be added soon since this is the first time I have ever heard of someone asking for it.
How long of a message were you sending?
SMS might be sent to you as a single message but after 153 ascii characters/ 70 unicode they are chunked into separate messages which we are billed for each separate one regardless of how it appears to the recipient.
We also don’t bill for attempted/failed SMS. Only SMS that were successfully passed to the tower would be processed and billed. There is a caveat that it might not reach your end device due to carriers filtering incoming SMS but there is no half sent message its either it was transmitted successfully or it was not.
The sms was 24 or less characters. Looking at my billing history it definitely charged me for all 15 texts. I tested it a couple other times and it sent the text 3 times and 9 another time. I’ve got my code printing out to the serial monitor so I can be sure my sendSMS function is only being called once. Looking at the billing history the sms are being sent out over a few minutes. Delayed between a couple of seconds up to a few minutes.
I would open a ticket with our support team so that you don’t have to post your private details here in the thread and we can look into the billing situation: https://support.hologram.io/hc/en-us/requests/new
But from a technical perspective that is how the SMS handling works
