4GPi communication module for Raspberry Pi by MechaTracks Co., Ltd. is now available from the Soracom IoT Store.

The 4GPi is a 4G/LTE module designed specifically for Raspberry Pi single board computers. Simply attach it to your Raspberry Pi, set up the dedicated tool to add cellular connectivity, and start developing IoT devices.

The 4GPi is designed with power configurations and operational stability in mind, making it suitable not just for PoC and prototyping but also for product integrations.

4GPi

• Availability: Japan only
• Price: 27,500 yen (tax included)
• Bundled with a 2,000 yen Soracom platform coupon (valid for 6 months, applicable to services with Japan coverage only)

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

This is a notice that the old SIM Management interface has now been discontinued according to the schedule announced previously, and is no longer available. Any users who have not yet switched to the new SIM Management interface will now be automatically redirected.

As mentioned in the previous announcement, the new SIM Management interface provides several significant improvements:

• Support for managing Subscription Containers
• Up to 20 times faster loading performance
• Improved usability and design following the Soracom Design System
• Dedicated SIM details URLs for bookmarking and easy sharing

For additional details about difference between the old and new interfaces as well as how to resolve SAM User permission errors with the new interface, please refer to the previous announcement. If you have any questions, please don't hesitate to contact the Soracom support team.

When exporting images or videos from Soracom Cloud Camera Services, a filename is automatically generated for each file. With this update, the format of the filename will change as follows:

• Milliseconds will be added to timestamps.

  Before this change: yyyy-mm-dd-HH-MM-SS

  After this change: yyyy-mm-dd-HH-MM-SS-fff

  Please note that when exporting from the Soracom User Console, the milliseconds will be set to 000. To include the actual milliseconds, please export files using the Soracom API.

• The timestamp(s) will refer to the date/time that the video was recorded rather than the date/time that the file was exported, such that the exported files will remain consistent with their recording date, regardless of when you export them.

  For example, if a video was recorded at 2023-08-01 00:00:00.000 and a still image from the video was exported at 2023-08-12 12:34:56.789, the timestamp in the filename will now refer to the time of recording.

  Before this change: 2023-08-12-12-34-56 (the date/time the image was exported, without milliseconds)

  After this change: 2023-08-01-00-00-00-000 (the date/time the video was recorded, including milliseconds)

  When exporting videos, two timestamps will now be included in the filename, corresponding to the start and end date/time of the recording.

The full specifications of the generated filenames are as follows:

Current Filename Specification

Currently, the filename generated for each exported file consists of the following information, joined by an underscore _:

• Export operation timestamp (example: 2023-08-12-12-34-56)
• Operator ID (example: OP0123456789)
• Device ID (example: 7CDDDEADBEEF)
• Device Name (example: MyCamera)
• Export ID (example: 12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234)
• File extension (.jpg for images or .zip for videos)

Example filename when exporting an image:

2023-08-12-12-34-56_OP0123456789_7CDDDEADBEEF_MyCamera_12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234.jpg

Example filename when exporting a video:

2023-08-12-12-34-56_OP0123456789_7CDDDEADBEEF_MyCamera_12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234.zip

Updated Filename Specification

After this update, the file name generated will consist of the following information:

• Recording timestamp, including milliseconds
  • For images, the start date/time (example: 2023-08-01-00-00-00-000)
  • For videos, the start and end date/time (example: 2023-08-01-00-00-00-000_2023-08-01-00-05-00-000)
• Operator ID (example: OP0123456789)
• Device ID (example: 7CDDDEADBEEF)
• Device Name (example: MyCamera)
• Export ID (example: 12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234)
• File extension (.jpg for images or .zip for videos)

Example filename when exporting an image:

2023-08-01-00-00-00-000_OP0123456789_7CDDDEADBEEF_MyCamera_12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234.jpg

Example filename when exporting a video:

2023-08-01-00-00-00-000_2023-08-01-00-05-00-000_OP0123456789_7CDDDEADBEEF_MyCamera_12345678-abcd-9012-efab-345678901234.zip

Effective date

This update will take effect on September 11, 2023.

Please note that the effective date may change without prior notice.

We kindly ask customers who may be affected by this change to update their systems or file management practices as necessary. If you have any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to contact the Soracom Support team.

We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause and thank you for your understanding and cooperation.

As previously announced, SIM IDs have been added to the service usage history CSVs as of August 24, 2023.

With this update, each line of the service usage history CSVs will also include the SIM's 19- or 32-digit SIM ID. As the SIM ID uniquely identifies each physical SIM regardless of whether Subscription Containers have been added, you will be able to easily track the total service usage for a particular SIM no matter which of its IMSIs were active.

For download instructions and additional information on service usage history CSVs, please refer to the following documentation:

• SORACOM Air
• SORACOM Beam
• SORACOM Funk
• SORACOM Funnel
• SORACOM Harvest Data

The corresponding export stats APIs have also been updated accordingly.

We would like to inform customers that the format of service usage history CSVs is scheduled to be updated to include SIM IDs.

Service usage history CSVs provide detailed usage information, such as how much data each SIM has consumed, or how many Soracom Beam or Soracom Harvest requests each SIM has sent during a specified timeframe.

Until now, SIMs could be identified in these service usage history CSVs using their 15-digit IMSI number. However, with the use of Subscription Containers, a single physical SIM may contain more than one IMSI, and the service usage history data will be attributed according to the IMSI that was active at the time of usage.

With this update, each line of the service usage history CSVs will also include the SIM's 19- or 32-digit SIM ID. As the SIM ID uniquely identifies each physical SIM regardless of whether Subscription Containers have been added, you will be able to easily track the total service usage for a particular SIM no matter which of its IMSIs were active.

For download instructions and additional information on service usage history CSVs, please refer to the following documentation:

• SORACOM Air
• SORACOM Beam
• SORACOM Funk
• SORACOM Funnel
• SORACOM Harvest Data

Update Schedule

This update is scheduled to take effect on August 24, 2023.

Using column names from the header row

As we continue to improve usage history features, the CSV format (such as the order of its columns) may occasionally change over time. Therefore, when programmatically processing these CSVs, we recommend referencing each line's values based on the column name found in the first line (the header row) of each CSV file, rather than column number. This will allow your scripts or programs to continue referencing the correct data, even if the column order changes.

If you need assistance with referencing the data in a CSV file using column names rather than column numbers, please don't hesitate to contact our support team.

As previously announced,　following items have now been added to the SIM List CSV, a file which contains a complete list of all SIMs in your account along with their details, after the renewalFeeStatusSetTime column:

• currentMCC
• currentMNC
• previousMCC
• previousMNC

By adding these new items, you can quickly sort and filter SIMs in your account to check the countries and networks they are currently or were previously connected to, in order to better understand connection behavior or to help with SIM management and troubleshooting.

Please note that the MCC and MNC values will appear as 3 digit and 1-3 digit numbers, respectively, rather than as text names, as these names may change over time. You can use resources such as mcc-mnc.com or Wikipedia: Mobile country code (and its related Mobile network codes pages) to find the name of the country or network as required. If an MNC value appears as a 1-digit number, simply add a leading 0 (such as 5 → 05) to determine the correct MNC.

The SIM List CSV can be downloaded from the SIM Management screen of the User Console, as well as from the Soracom API using the Subscriber:exportSubscribers API endpoint.

We are pleased to announce that coverage for plan01s is now available in the following countries.

plan01s and plan01s - Low Data Volume

Cameroon, Namibia

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

As previously announced, the retention period for billing & payment history, order history, data usage history, and service usage history has now been limited as follows:

Billing, Payment, and Order History

When accessing the Billing & Payment History screen or the Orders screen from the User Console, the amount of billing, payment, and order history available has been limited to the past 18 months.

This change has been also applied to the following APIs in the same manner:

• Payment:getPaymentTransaction
• Payment:listVolumeDiscounts
• Payment:getVolumeDiscount
• Order:cancelOrder
• Order:confirmOrder
• Order:updateOrderedResourceInitialSetting
• Order:listOrderedSubscribers
• Order:registerOrderedSim

Data and Service Usage History

When viewing or downloading the following data and service usage history from the User Console, the amount of usage history available has been limited to the past 18 months (when the usage history is aggregated by month or day), or the past 32 days (when aggregated by minute):

• Soracom Air data usage history
• Soracom Beam, Funk, Funnel, and Harvest Data service usage history
• Soracom Napter audit logs

This change has been also applied to the following APIs in the same manner:

• Stats:getAirStatsOfSim
• Stats:getAirStats
• Stats:exportAirStats
• Stats:getBeamStats
• Stats:exportBeamStats
• Stats:getFunkStats
• Stats:exportFunkStats
• Stats:getFunnelStats
• Stats:exportFunnelStats
• Stats:getHarvestStats
• Stats:getHarvestExportedDataStats
• Stats:getNapterAuditLogsExportedDataStats

If you require a copy of billing or order history older than the retention period, please contact our support team by logging into the User Console and selecting Support > Contact Us.

Please note that Soracom is unable to provide data and service usage history older than this retention period.

Starting this month, a notification email will be sent to the primary email address of your account whenever a plan-KM1 SIM exceeds 1 MiB of data usage during any given month, in order to help identify high data usage.

If you do not need these notifications, you can disable them by opening your Email Settings and checking the Stop sending data usage notifications to the primary email address option. Please note that disabling these notifications will also disable similar notifications for planX3 X3-5MB, plan-D D-300MB, and plan-K2 K2-300MB subscriptions. For more information, please refer to the Data Usage documentation.

If you would like to receive notifications for a different data usage threshold, or if you would like to set up data usage notifications for other subscriptions, you can create a custom Event Handler configuration instead.

When a Soracom IoT SIM connects to a cellular network, Soracom stores details about the connection, which is referred to as a "session." These session details include MCC (Mobile Country Code) and MNC (Mobile Network Code), which indicate the country and network that a SIM is connected to, and details for both the current session (if the SIM is online) and the previous session are stored as part of the SIM's properties.

With this update, following items will be added to the SIM List CSV, a file which contains a complete list of all SIMs in your account along with their details, after the renewalFeeStatusSetTime column:

• currentMCC
• currentMNC
• previousMCC
• previousMNC

By adding these new items, you can quickly sort and filter SIMs in your account to check the countries and networks they are currently or were previously connected to, in order to better understand connection behavior or to help with SIM management and troubleshooting.

This update will be applied starting from August 9, 2023.

Please note that the MCC and MNC values will appear as 3 digit and 1-3 digit numbers, respectively, rather than as text names, as these names may change over time. You can use resources such as mcc-mnc.com or Wikipedia: Mobile country code (and its related Mobile network codes pages) to find the name of the country or network as required. If an MNC value appears as a 1-digit number, simply add a leading 0 (such as 5 → 05) to determine the correct MNC.

The SIM List CSV can be downloaded from the SIM Management screen of the User Console, as well as from the Soracom API using the Subscriber:exportSubscribers API endpoint.