Telefonica brings GSM/GPRS to Arduino

The Telefonica/Arduino GSM/GPRS shield lets remote Arduino boards call home
Source: Telefonica

Telefonica and Arduino have presented the latest version of their Arduino GSM/GPRS shield. The new shield is being shown to attendees at Campus Party in Berlin. Telefonica's interest stems from wanting to create a low-cost device which can be connected through the company's M2M (machine to machine) technology. As Arduino boards are the hardware of choice for many designers when creating prototypes of new devices, the support for M2M with Arduino boards will allow them to integrate GSM/GPRS before going to production.

The initiative was announced at Campus Party 2011 in Valencia, where early versions of the shield were shown. The new shield has improvements in both the hardware and software compared to the previous shield, with smaller libraries capable of being used asynchronously and therefore allowing the card to communicate while the Arduino is left free to perform other tasks. Arduino users can also remotely manage their Arduinos using the Telefonica BlueVia web site. The service includes its own M2M SIM cards which can give GSM access from within the EU, USA and most of South America.

The BlueVia Arduino pages are already online and promise example code for HTTP connections, COSM (Pachube) feed updates and Twitter updates, along with other documentation, though the code has apparently not been checked into BlueVia's Github repository yet. The shield and SIM card will be available from the Arduino store, but are also currently not listed. Pricing for actual use is available: for €10 a developer can get 10MB of traffic which must be consumed within 6 months and for €15, 20MB of traffic to be consumed within 12 months.

See also:

• A practical Internet of Things, a feature from The H.

(djwm)