The Amazon Kinesis Video Stream adapter for SORACOM Funnel, previously offered on a Limited Preview basis, will be discontinued on July 31, 2021.

Soracom is pleased to offer a new D-300MB data bundle pricing plan for plan-D IoT SIMs. The original plan-D subscription provides pay-as-you-go pricing with coverage in Japan. The new plan-D D-300MB bundle provides the same service area coverage, but with new pricing that makes it easier to forecast data usage fees.

New Bundle Pricing

The plan-D subscription is available with Data-only and Data/SMS options. For plan-D (Data-only) subscriptions, the main differences between the original subscription and the new D-300MB bundle are as follows:

The D-300MB bundle is also available for plan-D (Data/SMS) SIMs, with similar differences in pricing.

For more information, please refer to SORACOM IoT SIM for Japan: Pricing page (in Japanese).

Getting Started with the plan-D D-300MB Bundle

You can start using the plan-D D-300MB bundle in the following ways:

Purchase a new plan-D D-300MB SIM

You can purchase a new plan-D D-300MB SIM from the SORACOM User Console. Simply switch to the Japan Coverage type, create a new order, and select the "SORACOM Air SIM card plan-D (D-300MB)" item. You can choose between Data-only and Data/SMS options, as well as the SIM card size you want to use.

For more instructions on creating an order, please refer to the Order Management: Placing a New Order instructions.

You can also purchase a new plan-D D-300MB SIM from the Soracom IoT Store (Japan) (in Japanese).

Add the D-300MB bundle to an existing plan-D SIM

If you already have a plan-D SIM, you can add the D-300MB bundle and begin using it right away, without paying for a new SIM. After logging into the SORACOM User Console, simply select your plan-D SIM, click Actions > Update bundle, and select the D-300MB bundle.

For more information on adding a bundle, please refer to the Data Usage: Changing Bundled Data Plans instructions.

Please note that the D-300MB bundle can only be added to a plan-D SIM, and cannot be added to other SIMs. In addition, once a D-300MB bundle has been added to a plan-D SIM, it cannot be removed.

The search functionality in the SIM Management screen of the User Console has been improved. In addition to searching by SIM name, tag, and group, you can also filter search results by SIM status, the type of subscription, and even the type of module, all from a single search interface.

SORACOM Funnel now supports transferring data from devices to SensorCorpus, an IoT platform from INFOCORPUS Inc.

For more information, please refer to the following pages (in Japanese):

• 指定のクラウドサービスに連携する「SORACOM Funnel」が、 インフォコーパスの「SensorCorpus」に対応 (SORACOM Inc.)
• ユニバーサルIoTプラットフォーム「SensorCorpus」が「SORACOM Funnel」のPartner Hosted Adapterに対応 (INFOCORPUS Inc.)

SORACOM Beam, a proxy and protocol conversion service which offloads encryption forwards data from IoT devices to the cloud, provides support for multiple protocols through various entry points, such as HTTP, MQTT, TCP, and UDP entry points.

When using the MQTT entry point to forward an MQTT connection from a device to a destination MQTT broker, you are currently able to select between two Soracom platform versions: 201912 and 201509. Soracom will end support for the 201509 version on January 20, 2022.

Differences between the MQTT Entry Point Versions

For more information about differences between the 201912 and 201509 versions, refer to the SORACOM Beam: MQTT Entry Point documentation.

Updating Beam MQTT Entry Point Configurations to Version 201912

If you are currently using the 201509 version in your Beam MQTT Entry Point configuration, please note that any configurations that still use version 201509 will automatically be switched to version 201912 on January 20, 2022, once support for the previous version has ended. Depending on the configuration of the MQTT client on your device, your device may no longer be able to connect to the destination MQTT broker in order to send or receive data once this change occurs.

Please carefully review the details in the SORACOM Beam: MQTT Entry Point documentation for information on how to update your device settings and migrate your Beam configuration to version 201912 in advance, in order to avoid interruption.

SORACOM Lagoon, a customizable dashboard service that allows you to create powerful data visualizations and share them with third parties, now supports creating pie chart visualizations and reduce transforms. Both of these features are currently available as a beta, and specifications are subject to change without notice.

Pie Chart (Beta)

You can now create pie chart to visualize percentages of data.

For example, when combined with an Expression function, you can visualize the percentage of sensors from a fleet of CO2 monitoring sensors that exceed CO2 concentrations of 1000 ppm.

Reduce Transform (Beta)

You can now add a Reduce transform to an Expression function, which will allow you to calculate the minimum (Min), maximum (Max), average (Mean), total (Sum), or count (Count) of a data set.

For example, by adding a Reduce transform to temperature data, you can quickly calculate average (Mean) temperature from a specific time period. Then, by further combining it with a Math Expression, you can create a graph that visualizes the temperature difference relative to the average temperature calculated from the transform.

We are pleased to announce support for using IAM roles as the authentication method for executing AWS Lambda functions from SORACOM Funk.

SORACOM Funk (Funk) is a service that relays the execution of cloud functions from IoT devices. With Funk, you can easily configure a device to execute an AWS Lambda function by simply sending a request to Funk.

Until now, Funk required the use of IAM user credentials, consisting of an AWS Access Key and Secret Access Key, in order to authenticate with your AWS Lambda function. Registering and managing these credentials to your Soracom account so that Funk is able to perform authentication requires some additional and operational overhead.

With this update, Funk is now able to perform authentication using IAM roles, which has the advantage of simplifying the process of setting up authentication information on AWS and registering it to your Soracom account. This method also helps realize AWS best practices for credential management.

Although authenticating with IAM user credentials will continue to be supported, we strongly recommend transitioning to using IAM roles. Existing SORACOM Funk configurations can be easily switched to the IAM role-based method.

You can find more information about this update on the Soracom Official Blog.