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reliable off-grid internet for monitoring - what are you using?

jbatx said:
I've been using a t-mobile 4g hotspot with repeaters to provide my remote retreat with wifi. It usually gets 2-3 "bars" with no booster. The wifi is 90% used by devices that send data to blynk and another mqtt server. The devices are esp32's and other things that send power usage, battery stats, etc. The issue is that the t-mobile hotspot just stops working about once a week while I'm 90 miles away... it's really inconsiderate that way. The fix, 100% of the time, is the drive there and restart the stupid thing. Literally, that's all that's needed. I'm looking at other options including a particle boron LTE board... but those seem to be out of stock for months everywhere.

What are you all using for reliable always-on internet?

I don't live on-site, it's a retreat for guests.

-JB
Click to expand...
Does anyone here have a solution that's not wireless? I've heard of people setting up their own mini tower at a high spot on their property and running a cable all the way to their house.

Here in the boonies of Peru, Movistar is the only cell company that has signal here. It's unreliable. We put on our phone's hotspot to use internet on a laptop. Movistar is not very transparent either. They sell you an unlimited data plan, but then you learn hotspot is limited to a certain # of gb per month, and I also just found out that you have to manually opt-in to which cell phone apps run from the unlimited data plan, otherwise they will pull data from the limited portion that you could otherwise use for hotspot.

Lesson learned the hard way this month. I didn't do the opt-in for the apps, so the first week I burned up all my limited data just by watching youtube on my phone (I assumed all data on my phone was unlimited by default). Well, now I've got no hotspot data for the entire month
 
AgroVenturesPeru said:
Does anyone here have a solution that's not wireless? I've heard of people setting up their own mini tower at a high spot on their property and running a cable all the way to their house.

Here in the boonies of Peru, Movistar is the only cell company that has signal here. It's unreliable. We put on our phone's hotspot to use internet on a laptop. Movistar is not very transparent either. They sell you an unlimited data plan, but then you learn hotspot is limited to a certain # of gb per month, and I also just found out that you have to manually opt-in to which cell phone apps run from the unlimited data plan, otherwise they will pull data from the limited portion that you could otherwise use for hotspot.

Lesson learned the hard way this month. I didn't do the opt-in for the apps, so the first week I burned up all my limited data just by watching youtube on my phone (I assumed all data on my phone was unlimited by default). Well, now I've got no hotspot data for the entire month
Click to expand...
A friend just sent me an article about starlink. Call me cheap, but $500 installation and $100 per month is out of my price range. Also I'm a little concerned about beaming the entirety of earth with an inescapable wifi signal.
 
AgroVenturesPeru said:
A friend just sent me an article about starlink. Call me cheap, but $500 installation and $100 per month is out of my price range. Also I'm a little concerned about beaming the entirety of earth with an inescapable wifi signal.
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That does seem expensive ..for internet. But, it's a different class of internet and I think it's better than the typical sat stuff.

I moved the mofi paddle antennas up high on the sarafi tent's frame it's now getting a "fair" signal ranging from 1-4Mbs download. Good enough to stream something and send IoT telemetry!
 
AgroVenturesPeru said:
Does anyone here have a solution that's not wireless? I've heard of people setting up their own mini tower at a high spot on their property and running a cable all the way to their house.

Here in the boonies of Peru, Movistar is the only cell company that has signal here. It's unreliable. We put on our phone's hotspot to use internet on a laptop. Movistar is not very transparent either. They sell you an unlimited data plan, but then you learn hotspot is limited to a certain # of gb per month, and I also just found out that you have to manually opt-in to which cell phone apps run from the unlimited data plan, otherwise they will pull data from the limited portion that you could otherwise use for hotspot.

Lesson learned the hard way this month. I didn't do the opt-in for the apps, so the first week I burned up all my limited data just by watching youtube on my phone (I assumed all data on my phone was unlimited by default). Well, now I've got no hotspot data for the entire month
Click to expand...
Is there LoRA coverage where you are? I don't know much about it, but it's worth a look. ...maybe
 
Example rural area on an Atlantic island. Optical cables only exist along the main roads and in areas with a certain population density. But it is improving. An isolated home has options:

- Comms satellite in GSO. Sounds far out, but with the right caching it works. Dynamical pages take a long time because signal travel, but continous down- and uploads are fast. Best block out the data krakens to speed things up. That also improves information density on web pages ...
You get a big dish in the garden and a special router/modem (not under your control), cost was ~40/month. That was before

- Starlink or another 'megaconstellation'. Which I will not install because of its interference with astronomy, meteorolgy and earth observation and of course the Kessler syndrome ... I have my principles ;-)

- Mobile phone network and pc dongles. I hear it works at reasonable speeds. Switching companies is of course more difficult then.

- A local company that uses the mobile network masts to install senders that cover an aerea in sight. That's the goto here because of the geography. You get a small dish in the garden and a router (not under your control). Cost is around ~40/month. Speed and reliability sufficient for me.
 
Kingdom of Spain, in my area the best solution was a 4G repeater with an antenna on the roof.
The "local" company you mention probably offers WiMax. We have one here, Conecta Balear. They only offered 7 megabits for €42/month (or 12 for €78). And then you need to pay for a mobile phone line separately. With my 4G I get easily 5-6 times as that. Repeater is some 7 km. away, line of sight.
With ION mobile I get mobile phone SIM, a "dual SIM" that I use in a small router, 120G (!) a month, pretty much unlimited calls, all for €22.
They use the Movistar network - horrible company, but they have the best coverage (the only coverage in this area).
-
 
My sympathy. Looks like I'm better off on San Miguel de La Palma. I mean, apart from occasional volcanic eruptions ... :cool:

Yeah, WiMax. They have options for 4/8/20/40 Mbit/s upload (Verimax). I had opted for the 8, which was enough for me. Usually it actually was a bit (pun) faster than that ... like up to 11.
 
How are you better off if you pay €40 for 11 megabits - and separately for you phone line, and I pay €22 for 30-40 including the phone line? :unsure:
-
 
[UPDATE] I moved the mofi 4500's factory paddle antennas up higher on the cabin veranda outdoors and aimed toward the nearest Verizon tower ...which is about 15-20 miles away. I'm getting 1-5Mbs. ...Not bad. Too early to know if the mofi itself will be more stable than the alcatel hotspot.
 
Don B. Cilly said:
Kingdom of Spain, in my area the best solution was a 4G repeater with an antenna on the roof.
The "local" company you mention probably offers WiMax. We have one here, Conecta Balear. They only offered 7 megabits for €42/month (or 12 for €78). And then you need to pay for a mobile phone line separately. With my 4G I get easily 5-6 times as that. Repeater is some 7 km. away, line of sight.
With ION mobile I get mobile phone SIM, a "dual SIM" that I use in a small router, 120G (!) a month, pretty much unlimited calls, all for €22.
They use the Movistar network - horrible company, but they have the best coverage (the only coverage in this area).
-
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I don't get how those business models work. They piggy back on the movistar infrastructure, yet are able to offer a cheaper plan than movistar. Here in Peru there is Bitel, which works the same way. Isn't it just a matter of time before Movistar raises rent prices and squashes the competition?
 
They're called mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). We have lots of them in Spain.
Most have their own (use commercially internationally available ones, like VPN providers and such) data network, and just use the main operator's repeaters.
Apparently the main operators are compelled to share their access by European (antitrust) laws.
They also probably don't care that much, because they get paid for it and don't have to provide customer support, billing and such... I guess ;·)
-
 
jbatx said:
[UPDATE] I moved the mofi 4500's factory paddle antennas up higher on the cabin veranda outdoors and aimed toward the nearest Verizon tower ...which is about 15-20 miles away. I'm getting 1-5Mbs. ...Not bad. Too early to know if the mofi itself will be more stable than the alcatel hotspot.
Click to expand...

More to my story. Those morons told me the alcatel Hotspot didn't cycle down and also had an external antenna hookup.

I was looking to get away from my prepaid account (for data).

Currently run thus modem: NETGEAR 4G LTE Broadband Modem - Use LTE as Primary Internet Connection (LB1120) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01N5ASNTE/ref=cm_sw_r_apan_glt_i_489N3J7Q8SMMAZ75PKH8

Absolutely rock solid connection. Going to stay with it and not pickup the alcatel hotspot and post-paid account.

I get 14MBPS. Its at an intermittent use cabin. Use for monitoring cameras, generator control and an Alexa. The Alexa is hooked to a loudspeaker so I can yell at intruders. Also run a sonoff relay box to turn on lights before I arrive.

It does not have wifi so you need to run your own router as an access point.
 
So far it's been solid. No outages at all since setting up. I do get plenty of packet drop with the repeater 300' away even with the yagi connected to the mofi. But, it doesn't phase the devices at all, they can send the telemetry data over crappy connections since the payload is tiny
 
jbatx said:
So far it's been solid. No outages at all since setting up. I do get plenty of packet drop with the repeater 300' away even with the yagi connected to the mofi. But, it doesn't phase the devices at all, they can send the telemetry data over crappy connections since the payload is tiny
Click to expand...
What repeater?
 
I'm having good luck with the 5G TMobile gateway. You can hook an external antenna to it, although it's not set up for that.
Sometimes I get 200mbps download but mostly it's 100 to 150.
And it's only $50/month for life; guaranteed to never go up as long as you never cancel.
 
BMcL said:
I'm having good luck with the 5G TMobile gateway. You can hook an external antenna to it, although it's not set up for that.
Sometimes I get 200mbps download but mostly it's 100 to 150.
And it's only $50/month for life; guaranteed to never go up as long as you never cancel.
Click to expand...
Not available for me at home or my remote cabin.
 
hey update on my starlink. My dish cable broke and starlink RMA'd me a new one. The old one was ver1-proto1 or something, the new one is ver2-proto3. The difference in power usage is drammatic. 90-120 watts to 35-80 watts, HOWEVER for some reason every once and a while ( I think clouds) it jumps to 180 watts for a few minutes. Still, it usually hangs in there to 35w

So the newer version of the starlink dish are almost comparable to 5g base stations (15-35w) in terms of power usage.

Recently ELon went on twitter saying that starlink can be powered by a cigarette lighter in the new rom. I haven't received any firmware update but when I do I hope it goes down even more (hopefully disable that spike)
 
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