Sony Spresense Main Board + LTE Extension Board sold by Restar Electronics Corporation is now available from the Soracom IoT Store.

This kit consists of a Spresense Main Board IoT microcontroller equipped with a CXD5602 smart sensing processor developed by Sony, and an LTE Extension Board equipped with a LBAD0XX1SC LTE-M cellular module by Murata, in addition to a Soracom plan-D D-300MB IoT SIM for cellular connectivity.

Spresense Main Board + LTE Extension Board Starter Kit

Starter Kit contents:

• Spresense Main Board (CXD5602PWBMAIN1)
• Spresense LTE Extension Board (CXD5602PWBLM1JUL)
• Soracom IoT SIM for Japan (plan-D D-300MB, nano size, data communication only)
• Availability: Japan only
• Price: 14,828 yen (tax included, bundled with a 1,350 yen Soracom platform coupon)

For more information or to purchase, please refer to the product page (Japanese).

Soracom Beam is a proxy service for forwarding data from a device to an endpoint that you specify, such as a server or a cloud service. Proxying with Beam allows you to add encryption such as converting an HTTP request from your device to HTTPS, and to modify the request such as adding custom HTTP headers, so that the device does not need to do so by itself.

With this update, the Soracom Beam HTTP and Website entry points can now generate and add Authorization headers to the HTTP requests forwarded to your endpoint, based on credentials that you store in Soracom. This allows your server or cloud service to authorize the connections coming from Beam.

Available authentication schemes

The Soracom Beam Authorization header option supports the following schemes:

AWS Signature V4

• Supported Credentials: AWS credentials, AWS IAM Role credentials

With this scheme, Beam will generate AWS Signature V4 headers based on your AWS or AWS IAM Role credentials, service, and region of AWS, and append them to the HTTP request.

Basic

• Supported Credentials: Username password credentials

With this scheme, Beam will generate a value based on your username and password credentials, and append it to the HTTP request as an Authorization: Basic ${value} header.

Bearer

• Supported Credentials: API token credentials, Pre-Shared Key

With this scheme, Beam will append the value of your API token or Pre-Shared Key to the HTTP request as an Authorization: Bearer ${token} header.

Bearer JWT Token

• Supported Credentials: Google Service Account (JSON), Private Key (PEM)

With this scheme, Beam will generate a JSON Web Token (JWT) based on your credentials and JWT claims, and append it to the HTTP request as an Authorization: Bearer ${token} header.

For more details, please refer to the Soracom Beam documentation.

We are excited to announce the release of an updated SIM Management interface in the Soracom User Console, which brings the following significant improvements:

• Better performance - Loading and displaying a list of SIMs is now much faster, in some cases as much as 20x faster. Pagination speed has also been significantly improved.
• Modernized design - The SIM Management page is one of the oldest parts of the User Console and has been given a facelift using the Soracom Design System, providing a more streamlined and intuitive user experience.
• Improved searching - Search parameters are now reflected in the URL, which allows you to bookmark specific searches or share them with your team, as well as to navigate to another part of the User Console and return back to the search results.

This update also lays the foundation for delivering further improvements. We are excited to announce additional updates in the coming months.

Please note that with this release, the right-click menu has been removed. You can still access all SIM management actions by clicking the checkbox for one or more SIMs, and then clicking the Actions menu.

In addition to recording videos, SoraCam devices are capable of detecting the movement of people, animals, and objects. These motion detection events can be viewed when connected directly to the camera using the ATOM Mobile App.

With this update, motion detection events can also be retrieved programmatically with the Soracom API. The new SoraCam:listSoraCamDeviceEvents API can be combined with other SoraCam APIs to automate the exporting of video recordings when motion detection has occurred, and to integrate with other systems.

You can also check the list of motion detection events related details on the Soracom User Console.

For more information on how to use this API, please refer to the Checking detected events documentation (Japanese).

On April 27, 2021, the Soracom Lagoon service received a major upgrade. Due to some changes which were not backwards compatible, the previous version of Lagoon was rebranded as Soracom Lagoon Classic so that existing customers could continue to use it. Customers were allowed to either continue using Lagoon Classic or migrate to the upgraded version of Lagoon, and we also announced that Soracom Lagoon Classic would be deprecated in May 2022.

On May 31, 2022, Lagoon Classic was deprecated accordingly. Customers still using Lagoon Classic could continue to use it in read-only mode, and we similarly announced that Lagoon Classic would be fully discontinued in December.

As of December 1, 2022, Soracom Lagoon Classic has now been discontinued and is no longer available. The upgraded version of Soracom Lagoon is still available for use.

If you have any questions or concerns regarding the discontinuation of Lagoon Classic, please feel free to contact our support team.

When purchasing SIMs directly from the User Console, Soracom pre-registers each SIM in the order to your account. Once you receive your order, the SIM registration process will be completed automatically, saving you time from having to register each SIM one by one.

However, SIM settings such as Group and Speed Class can only be configured after each SIM has been registered and added to your account. While it is possible to select multiple SIMs and configure such settings, doing so for a large number of SIMs has been tedious and has still required waiting until after the SIMs have been registered.

Now, users can now select what initial settings to apply to each SIM in an order prior to registering the SIMs.

After placing an order from either the User Console or Soracom IoT Store, you can specify the following initial settings for each of the subscription plans included in your order:

• Group
• Speed Class
• Tags

These initial settings can be configured right away, even before your order has shipped. Once you receive your order and click "Register," the initial settings that you specified for the order will be automatically applied to each SIM as they are registered.

Please note:

• Certain options or services are configured in a Group and are automatically applied to all SIMs that have been added to that group. When specifying a Group initial setting, this may result in a corresponding increase in option or service fees as soon as the SIMs have been registered and initial settings applied.
• When placing an order from the Soracom IoT Store, you must log into the User Console after completing your order to be able to configure the initial settings for that order.

For additional details, please refer to Soracom Air for Cellular: Registration documentation.

We are pleased to announce that plan01s and plan01s Low Data Volume coverage now includes Reunion.

For complete details about data rates, supported carriers, and coverage in other countries, please refer to the Supported Carriers documentation.

We recently announced a new renewalFeeStatusSetTime SIM property which indicates the date and time when a Soracom IoT SIM was registered in the Ready status, or when the status was set to Standby or Suspended. When a SIM remains in one of these statuses for more than one year, an annual renewal fee is charged. The renewalFeeStatusSetTime property allows you to calculate the amount of time remaining until a corresponding renewal fee will be charged.

While the renewalFeeStatusSetTime property is now returned as part of a Soracom API response from the related APIs, this update allows you to check the same information directly from the User Console.

To find the date when the SIM was set to its ready, standby, or suspended status:

1. Open the SIM Management screen, select a SIM, and click Details.
2. The date will be displayed in the Renewal Fee Tracking Date detail.

As previously mentioned, please note that renewal fees apply only to the following subscription plans:

• plan01s
• plan01s - Low Data Volume
• plan-NA1-package
• plan-KM1
• planP1
• planX3

For more information on renewal fees, please refer to the Soracom Air: SIM Types and Pricing & Fee Schedule documentation.

Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) is a customer-created dedicated gateway that provides Soracom Air for Cellular and Soracom Arc devices with a private network environment on the Soracom platform. When an IoT SIM is connected to a VPG, its data communication is handled by the dedicated gateway rather than by Soracom's default shared gateway, which in turn allows you to:

• Configure the VPG to allow or block access to certain destinations.
• Connect the VPG to your own private network, which in turn allows your devices to access servers or other network resources in your private network without data going over the Internet.

Enabling connectivity with a VPG

When configuring an IoT SIM to connect to a VPG, the SIM must first be added to a group, and the group's Virtual Private Gateway setting must be enabled and configured to use the VPG. In addition, if the SIM is already connected to a cellular network, the ongoing session must be deleted and re-established in order for the data to be routed through the VPG.

If an ongoing session is not deleted, data from the SIM will continue to be routed through the previous gateway instead of through the VPG. However there has not been a way to check whether the ongoing session is routed through the VPG or not.

Checking VPG connectivity status

With this update, you can now check whether a SIM's data session is routed through a VPG according to its group settings, in order to determine if a session should be deleted to reconnect accordingly. If you have more than one VPG, you can also check which VPG the connection is routed through. VPG details are available from a SIM's Session History tab:

As of November 1, 2022, prices for the following Japan-only devices have been revised. Prices are in Japanese Yen (¥) and include Japanese consumption tax.

Antenna for 3G/LTE Cat.1/LTE Cat.M Module HW-MULTI-GA-RSMA

• Old price: ¥1,188 (includes a ¥100 Soracom platform service coupon)
• New price: ¥1,628 (includes a ¥100 Soracom platform service coupon)

For more details, visit the product page (Japanese).

IP65 antenna for LTE Cat.1/LTE Cat.M module Taoglas GA.130.201111

• Old price: ¥2,288 (includes a ¥100 Soracom platform service coupon)
• New price: ¥2,618 (includes a ¥100 Soracom platform service coupon)

For more details, visit the product page (Japanese).