Last week, I deployed a Boron LTE and an Argon and ran some tests using the “Web-connected LED” example (LED toggle from the Particle Cloud) in both Web IDE and Particle Workbench.
I did upgrade the Boron LTE via FOTA to Device OS 3.1.0 from the shipping v1.1.0, and also upgraded the Argon via USB to Device OS v3.1.0.
To my surprise, the “Billing & Usage” (Free Sandbox) in the Console showed cellular data usage of 2.40 MB. I thought FOTA cellular does not count towards cellular usage. Also, I wouldn’t have thought that testing out the Web-connected LED toggle a dozen times or so would use 2.4MB of data!
For the last 4 days, both the Boron and the Argon have been offline & disconnected, yet the cellular data usage has increased to 3.03 MB. The data operations are the same as when I last powered up Boron/Argon.
I’ll be monitoring the cellular data usage further as part of my Boron testing to better understand billing & usage.
I’m somewhat confused. Why would cellular data usage change since the Boron was offline for several days?
I’d would appreciate if someone could chime in and offer possible reason(s) for the above.
I have reviewed how the usage charges are calculated but still trying to see the actual numbers vs. what they should be. Thanks!
btw - I’m pretty impressed by the Boron/Argon boards and the online Particle dev resources. Looking forward to getting familiar with Device OS and getting some cellular projects off the ground!
OTA updates don't count against the Data Operations quota but they do of course count against the 100MB cellular data quota as this is measured by the cell-net provider without it being able to distinguish what kind of data was transmitted.
Furthermore is it not uncommon that cell-net providers do not count on an exact byte basis but count chunks of up to several KB even when only a few byte were transferred in a certain time frame.
However, Particle has set the 100MB data quote well beyond the limit your 100,000 free D/Os could ever consume.
But if one would keep flashing the device OTA hundreds of times one may run out of data quote but still have the full allowance of D/Os left.
To answer that it would be also interesting to know when you acquired the 2.4MB reading in relation to the time when you switched off your Boron. There can be a considerable delay between the actual usage and the corresponding usage report.
So when you saw the 2.4MB directly after you disconnected the Boron you may not yet have seen the latest usage report of that session. The final update may take hours - up to a day - to actually be called in from the provider.
Thank you for the clarification.
Yes, it’s possible that the final usage update may have taken a day or two. I’ll monitor the usage again in 1-2 days with the Boron still disconnected.
Yes, it can take a minimum of one day for the cellular data usage to update. In some cases, it can be delayed by several days depending on your local mobile carrier and the type of device you have.
This is one of the reasons the focus is now on data operations (which we can measure within the Particle cloud) vs. cellular data usage (which we have little control over measuring).
