Telstra turned on its LTE network across Australia several months ago. Do we have any timing for availability of Boron’s with LTE for use in Australia?
I have ordered a couple of 3G versions to get started but would like to know if the LTE variants will be available in the July timeframe.
Thanks
I’m also keen to know the same thing.
Cat-M is also available with Telstra (supported the Boron).
If you want, check out https://www.m2mone.com.au/ they can give you Telstra SIMs that are quite affordable and work with CatM/NB-IoT 
Cameron
Thanks. That looks great. The prices are very reasonable.
I will follow this up with Particle with the view to purchasing a couple of LTE boards for trials as soon as the Boron’s become available in July. I have an order in for several boards including two 3G Boron’s.
The documentation states that the Nano 4FF is unpopulated. Not sure if that means it does not have a sim installed (understandable) or if the sim holder is not installed. I hope it is the former.
I will be converting a medical data logger I developed for clinical trials with cystic fibrosis patients from a Photon to a Boron. This avoids the complication of getting patients to enter their WiFi credentials.
At present we are undertaking an initial clinical evaluation trial which is looking to be very promising. The use of LTE is preferable to 3G for longer term clinical trials and possible routine therapeutic use including telemedicine applications.
This is not in the league of Particle’s principal IoT thrust (in particular Mesh) but has been a very rewarding retirement activity. The Particle development environment has been a great assistance as has the community bulletin board.
Cystic Fibrosis is a nasty disease. The hope is that this device will assist in improving therapeutic technique and improved patient outcomes.
I hope it goes well! Sounds like an excellent use-case. It’s great to see that over another temperature sensor!
I also am hoping ‘unpopulated’ means there is a SIM tray available for it.
*** A bit of an aside for a fellow Aussie****
We’ve been building products as well in Australia. You are probably well across it - but if you end up selling/producing the devices they may need to be compliant with EMC standards. We ran into a whole lot of issues with our EMC testing and had to redesign the host PCB.
I’m unsure what the regulations are with your device, but reach out to ACMA (give them a call) and they’ll put you in touch with the right person to tell you what you need to be compliant with. I’m unsure if it applies if you are doing your own kit at home vs. selling (need to check).
We should have taken more care earlier on for EMC compliance and it caught us out a bit (6month delay).
Also these guys (while expensive!) were really helpful during testing: http://www.emctech.com.au/contact-enquiries/
Hope that helps
Thanks for the tip off. I will certainly look into the EMC issue.
We currently have 7 units - I use two for development while my son is using 5 units for the initial clinical trials as part of his PhD program. The extent to which we scale up for wider use will depend on the outcome of this initial trial. We will need to get formal approval from the TGA and EMC may be another hurdle.
I would be interested to learn what issues you had with your pcb.
Your link brought up the following
“In Australia devices that fall under TGA jurisdiction must be tested to IEC 60601-1 and IEC 60601-1-2. RCM testing, certification and labelling requirements as governed by ACMA do not apply.”
The TGA approval process is not something I have looked into as yet ( the current devices are operating under an experimental approval process) but to be forewarned is great. Thanks again for the tip-off.
We’ve had to add filters onto the lines coming out of the Electron in the form of some SMD capacitors.
The new boards are arriving in the next few days, so can’t say exactly yet what the fixes are that worked.
Mainly any long PCB traces from the power lines from the Electron seemed to generate a LOT of noise. Also long wires coming off the digital pins didn’t seem to work well. (Best advice there for us was optical isolation on those pins). We also started using more shielding on the longer cables.
Another thing that worked nicely was copper tape on the underside of the PCB and then grounding the copper tape - but I’d rather design fixes than use this as a planned solution.
I am interested in this as well. I have ordered a 3G and an LTE as based on the specs it looks like the LTE should work with Telstra.
I am keen to know which version of the SARA R410M is being shipped in the initial production run. There are two variants -01B (North America) and -02B (Global).
The photo of the Boron on Particle’s promotional material is a -01B. If this is the version being shipped in July it seems it will NOT work in Australia even with a third part SIM.
The Boron has the SARA-410M-02B (global).
The pictures were taken with pre-production units. The Argon Wi-Fi chip is not actually an ESP32 in the picture either.
Thanks. That is great news. I will change my order from two 3G units to one 3G and one LTE for initial assessment.
I can get a third party SIM for Telstra network so will not have to wait for a Particle to have an LTE sim for use in Australia.
The m2m charging rate is more flexible for my application since I can pool devices. I can probably live with the 3MB per month Particle allocation for routine use but will need to be able to download 0.5 MB files periodically. The ability to pool allocations across devices will make this a more cost effective method.
This is looking very encouraging - thanks
M2M portal is pretty sweet too, can do network level checking to troubleshoot.
If only Particle offered 100mb plans for a reasonable price! Oh well.
What signal strength are you getting with the Boron LTE and Telstra?
The best I’m getting is -90dBm (that’s about 50% using that scale). I’ve used various antennas. I was speaking with one of the particle guys in Boston and he was getting -60dBm, which is where I’d prefer to be.
Mine sit around -100. the best ove seen is whilst driving at that was 70% not sure what the dbm was at that time.