Hi,
I got the Electron Cellular kit and it says it includes three months free. Now that I’m trying to setup my SIM, it asks my credit card. Why? Is there a way to bypass the card info?
Presumably, it’s asking for a credit card so it can charge you after the free period expires. I have a card on file even though I don’t have an Electron on my account. I think that’s standard for Particle. @rickkas7 might be able to comment on bypassing the card but I don’t think so.
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Yes, you need to have a credit card on file. The Electron is 3 months of up to 3 MB of data per month. If you exceed the 3 MB data allowance, you will be charged for the overage so a credit card is required.
Thanks to both of you. Hopefully I will like it and continue, but if not, is there a way to remove the card before the trial time?
Right now, the only way to remove one’s credit card is to file a request with support.
We only require the credit card in case you exceed your free 3 MB in the first 3 month period.
You can cancel the subscription at any time by removing the SIM card by visiting your console and going to the SIMs page and deactivating or releasing your SIM card. If it is not active, we do not charge a monthly maintenance fee and you won’t be charged anything.
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This is frustrating. Whatever I wanted to do, it asks for a credit card. I’m going to return the boards and look for other platforms. Thank you all and good luck.
P.S. I can easily add a credit card myself BUT for removing I must file a request and go through support!! I really don’t get that!
Removing a credit card is not a feature that has been in high enough demand to warrant building it into the console. It certainly would make sense, but there have been higher priorities. Also, to be clear, the credit card can only be removed when you’ve released ownership of the SIM card. You can only use the 3 months of up to 3 MB of data with a credit card associated with your account.
If you prefer, you can use an Electron with a 3rd-party SIM card which requires no credit card with Particle and you can continue to use the Particle cloud features (for up to 100 devices in your account).
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I appreciate your response. I do believe that dealing with credit cards must be in the priorities. As a newbie, I have a feeling that by entering my card, I will get stuck there forever and can’t leave! I never had a good experience with support services and filling a request with others. But I’m sure you are doing a great job at Particle.
Before returning the boards, what options do we have for a 3rd-party SIM card in the U.S.? Can we use our own cloud? We have our own cloud and MQTT broker. We would like to use Electron with a SIM to transmit data to our MQTT broker. Is it possible to program the boards without registering them at Particle cloud?
Thanks again for answering my questions.
The Particle cloud provides a secure and data-efficient communication method for data transfer (publish and subscribe) as well as management features like over-the-air flashing of code. This is optional, and you can run the device in a mode where this is disabled.
The Electron supports TCP so you can interact with external services like MQTT, bypassing the Particle cloud. The only caveat is that you will be using 3rd-party libraries, and the support for TLS/SSL encryption is not built-in an requires large 3rd-party libraries. Also, doing TLS/SSL handshakes will use a lot of data (around 5K per handshake).
Finally, you can operate in a hybrid environment where you use the Particle cloud only for device management (code flashing) and directly connect to external services.
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Makes sense. Those are great information and I appreciate your time explaining it.
Thanks.
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This is very useful. i presume your suggestion apply to Boron. Could you please point me to resources to work on bypassing particle cloud? what large libraries are you referring to?
The TlsTcpClient from hirotakaster is currently the best TLS/SSL library available, in my opinion.
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