LILYGO T-SIM7000G ESP32-WROVER-B Solar Charge SIM GPS Antenna CH9102F 16MB 2G/NB TTGO Development Board

Let's get one detail straight.The vendor claims that it doesn't work with LTE networks. This is...misleading.If you're talking 4G and 5G? YEAH. It's not capable of anything other than IoT-NB, Cat-M1 (Hint...), and GSM (2G, largely shut down...) for it's connectivity. It's not fast, nor is it intended to be.If your provider does IoT-NB service, this will work nicely.If your provide does LTE Cat-M1 (M2M, narrowband service), it will work nicely as well.The statement that it does not do LTE needs to be dropped by LillyGo- it causes them a problem. It means people won't use their product with a KORE SuperSIM. Which you should rather very much DO. It's using a SIM7000G, _Global_ modem. Works largely worldwide- paired with a KORE SuperSIM, you can have your IOT device work just about anywhere there's, "M2M Cell Service." One proviso. It doesn't do IoT-NB service, the competing answer. If you have one of those providers and an IoT-NB SIM go right on ahead. If you were going to use KORE's SuperSIM or something like Verizon as your provider, go right on ahead with confidence. As long as their M2M service uses Iot-NB OR LTE Cat-M1, you can use this product for your project.That handled and done, how is this as a device. If you can handle the bit of Chonky length introduced by their choice of a 18650 class Lithium rechargeable cell, there's little to NOT like there.ESP32. Development is possible with Arduino, PlatformIO, MicroPython, and more. Fairly high performance dual core microcontroller with 2.5 GHz WiFi, Bluetooth, decent SPI/I2C/GPIO support. Does LTE-M1 data sensibly and...fairly easily...all things considered. SMS is _possible_ but requires your provider _provisioning_ this for you in your SIM for the unit. (Need to have a convo with KORE/Twilio people about the SuperSIM...need SMS directly that simply goes to 1-3 locations, mostly delivering a message to the deistred number as a Mission Critical aspect. Internet's not reliable for this...) Deep Sleep capabilities. Competing devices don't do this right now due to COVID induced supply chain problems.Only real drawback is that, like MOST of the actual plays in IoT, it's less "novice friendly" and has somewhat less than stellar documentation overall- but you'll find yourself thanking yourself down the line for it. It's looking like a solid performer overall to my project- prototype will be able to be done...now that I figured out how the LTE modem actually worked within the device- which is a bit counterintuitive for modems up the Foodchain in the 4G/5G space.

First let's get this out of the way.I'm surprised these people don't know their own product. It connects via 4G!This is from the Device I connected 10 minutes ago:+CPSI: LTE CAT-M1,Online,310-410,0x4C0E,182550289,215,EUTRAN-BAND12,5110,3,3,0,0,125,7It's CAT-M1. So the 2G statement is just flat out wrong.Now onto the good stuff.Once I got the board fired up, I did these steps and was running in less than 30m. I'm adding the time took. Chat GPT was mostly helpful.1. Connect antennas 2m (they actually are quite hard to press in)2. Install ESP32 board drivers through Arduino 5m3. Install battery - 10m. I had to bend in the tabs with needlenose pliers as the battery simply would not fit.3. Bring in all functions example from Github and compile 5m - no issues!I ran my sim broadband so the APN stuff wasn't even necessary. i used 'broadband' for APN.4. Upload and run 10mYou have to slow down the upload speed, or at least I did have to reduce it from 900k to 500k. This is in Arduino Tools->Upload speed5. Open serial port and run - 10m6. Post data to cloud - 60mI could not find 6 to send data. in all functions so I added an http get and used dweet.io which is a very skinny method to display device data from cloud side.Take a little time to learn the AT commands.I can't say enough about this board. It connected with default settings to AT&T and displayed device data on dweet.io. GPS works, everything just works.Finally one last compliment it has a great build quality and is quite stout!

The board worked pretty much out of the box. LTE communications works perfectly. Since I am based in the US I only needed a local SIM and bought the cheapest Mint Mobile SIM roaming on T-Mobile's network as I understand it. I have actually have had this board for quite a while using it intermittently, originally with a Soracom SIM. I am not using GPS so can not comment re. its sensitivity or accuracy. Used all the normal ESP32 dev tools, Arduino IDE originally, then using Platform IO.

This is a wonderful little package.I got this to setup a gps tracker for my parents camper. I can send an email to the board with a phone number and it will start sending the coordinates every hour.I can stop it remotely. And there is a distress button I wired up to send an sos and coordinates to selected phone numbers.I plan to add more features when they're back from their first trip.

Got everything working great. Quick response from the vendor and the told me to install CH9102 driver. I tried it on win 10 and bingo.. everything is working perfectly. Got sample code on github and bingo. So, turns out this is a great board, AND a great vendor!

To get this, but it just won't work on my mac like the ESP32 does.A fatal error occurred: Failed to write to target RAM (result was 01070000)Blah.

I'm getting 25-75 feet off for the gps location when the receiver is on my open air balcony. Very very easy to setup with the github code examples. Though had to tweak a little to get multiple digits to print for example, changed to "Serial.println(lat, 6);".Pretty disappointed with this accuracy as it's barely usable. Definitely not the 2.5m accuracy advertised.

The only problem I have with this chip is that it's very difficult to put it on a breadboard.