Gprs module + 4D system touch LCD

Hardware
1

Hello,

I’d like to know if would be possible to connect a GPRS module and a 4D systems touchpanel.
also a barometric sensor trough I2C…
If possible what gprs module would you guys suggest?

Excellent work folks!

Leo

2

Hi @Leo,

All definitely possible! We don’t have a GPRS module yet that we can recommend; anyone else out there have a suggestion?

3

Thank you Zach!,
I’ll be looking by my own and post my results. I need 2 ways of comunication in my proyect, GPRS as a backup.
can’t wait to get my hands on a sparkcore.

Leo

4

Hi @Leo,
Did you try any GPRS module? I am also looking for grps option so any feedback or information will be really helpful

5

It would be great to make a version of the SPARK with GPRS or 3G module :smile:
In certain situations for some applications WIFI is not always helpful.

1 Like
6

Please feel free to weigh in on future versions here as well :slight_smile: https://community.spark.io/t/will-there-be-a-spark-core-ii/2502

Thanks,
David

7

I’ve got a Seeed GPRS shield. I’ll hook it to the Shield Shield later today and see if I can port the driver. Shouldn’t be hard as it works over UART. I’ve gotten it sending SMS messages and uploading temperature data after studying the data sheet and fixing Seeed’s shitty code (on an Arduino Uno), so I can’t see why it won’t work on the Core. :smiley:

If I remember right, it uses something similar to a WAP portal to send/receive http data, so you don’t have to do a lot of fiddling to get data out.

The downside is you won’t be able to send data to the Spark Cloud when on GPRS, so you’ll need to have an entire second set if functions that process your data and get them wherever they need to go. Not ideal, I know. This is the primary reason I don’t see a third party cell shield being useful at all for the Core. (Now a version of the Core with a cellular modem instead of WiFi module would be awesome. As would an official cell shield that basically supported all the Spark Cloud and TCP functions.)

@Dave Can the Core even currently startup without WiFi connectivity? That could be a show stopper right there.

8

Hey @timb,

A cellular version of the core would be cool, and depending on if the gprs radio gave you basic sockets, there would be no reason why you couldn’t just connect to your server / cloud through that if wifi wasn’t available. :smile:

If you set SPARK_CLOUD_CONNECT = 0 then the core will run setup/loop without having first connected to the cloud I believe. The nice wrappers for these are still pretty new, but some docs are here: http://docs.spark.io/#/firmware/connection-management-spark-disconnect-and-spark-connect . – I suspect these haven’t been rolled out to the build IDE yet. We’re still working on testing the next stable firmware version.

Thanks!
David

9

Hello @amit_singh,

For the proyect I was into in that time, I finally used a waspmote with wifi and gprs, from Libelium. They are focused into distributed sensors with all type of radios availables as modules… they are quite expensive, thought. I’m reserving the spark for another proyect of my own, just waiting for the private cloud to be available.

Cheers