Soracom Air for Cellular plan-US-max now supports MO (Mobile Originated) SMS, giving IoT devices that use plan-US-max for connectivity the ability to send SMS messages.

In addition to the existing support for receiving MT (Mobile Terminated) SMS, this update now allows for bidirectional communication between devices and servers using SMS.

Please note that plan-US-max MO SMS support is limited to sending messages to the Unified Endpoint SMS address 901001. Data sent to Unified Endpoint can be stored in Soracom Harvest Data or forwarded to a different destination using another service such as Soracom Beam. Sending messages to other addresses is not supported.

For more information, please refer to the Sending Data with SMS & USSD documentation.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the Soracom support team.

We are pleased to announce the following user interface improvements for Soracom Napter:

New Visual Explanation of the TLS Option

When creating an On-demand Remote Access session from the User Console, a new diagram will show the connection between the device and Napter, and the connection between Napter and the client. This diagram will update according to your TLS Option selection, allowing you to visually understand how the connection will be established:

View On-demand Remote Access Session Remaining Time

When viewing the list of On-demand Remote Access sessions, each session now displays the remaining time, allowing you to more easily check how much time is left before the session expires.

To check the originally requested session duration, simply hover your mouse over the [i] icon.

For more information, please refer to the Napter: Usage documentation.

We are excited to announce a new time-lapse video creation and download feature for Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam). With this feature, users can choose a specific time period, interval, and frame rate, and create a summarized time-lapse video from an existing video that has been uploaded by a SoraCam device. This allows for more efficient monitoring of on-site conditions, without the need to download and review entire videos.

Note that a cloud continuous recording license is required to use this feature.

For more information about the time-lapse video feature, please refer to Generate and Download Time-Lapse Videos (Japanese).

We are pleased to announce that math functions can now be used in Soracom Flux expressions, such as in the execution condition of a Flux Action as well as in some input fields. These functions include trigonometric and logarithm functions, allowing for more complex calculations when building Flux applications.

For more information, please refer to the Use Expressions in Actions documentation.

Starting April 10, 2025, customers using invoice payments will have the option to change their payment due date from “month-end closing, next month-end payment (NET30)” to “month-end closing, payment end of month after next (NET60)”.

This change will apply to invoices issued for the April 2025 billing cycle onward.

Please note that a handling fee of 550 JPY (tax included) will be added per invoice when the due date is changed to NET60.

For details on how to switch to invoice payments or change the payment due date, please refer to the following guide: Update Invoice Information Issued by Net Protections (Japanese).

We are pleased to announce that the extension of the maximum Keep-Alive timeout for Soracom's HTTP entry points to 65 seconds will be rolled out starting from April 7, 2025.

As previously mentioned, by specifying Connection: keep-alive in the HTTP request header, devices using Soracom Air for Cellular and Soracom Arc can reuse TCP connections and reduce data usage due to reconnections when sending additional HTTP requests. With this change, if devices send HTTP requests to these entry points at intervals of less than 65 seconds, the connection will be maintained, and data usage will be reduced. Previously, the Keep-Alive timeout was set to 5 seconds.

Affected Entry Points

• Soracom Beam HTTP Entry Point
• Soracom Beam Website Entry Point
• Soracom Funk HTTP Entry Point
• Soracom Funnel HTTP Entry Point
• Soracom Harvest Data/Files HTTP Entry Point
• Unified Endpoint HTTP Entry Point

Implementation Date

April 7, 2025

This specification change will be reflected gradually after the implementation date.

Required Actions

If your device cannot support the extended Keep-Alive timeout, you can specify Connection: close in the HTTP request header to disable the Keep-Alive timeout.

If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact the Soracom support team.

Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) now supports up to 8x speed playback of video recordings saved to the cloud. This improvement over the previous maximum of 2x playback allows for more efficient review of recorded footage.

For detailed instructions on how to use this feature, please refer to the Playback videos stored in the cloud documentation (Japanese).

We are pleased to introduce a new Batch Write feature for Soracom Harvest Data. This feature enables saving multiple time series data points to Harvest Data in a single operation, helping devices to reduce data transfer costs and battery consumption.

Usage

To use the Batch Write feature, your device should send JSON data containing an array of data points to Harvest Data. In the following example below, the array of data points is found in the data attribute.

{
  "data": [
    { "value": 123, "time": "2025-03-26T12:34:56Z" },
    { "value": 456, "time": "2025-03-27T12:34:56Z" },
    { "value": 789, "time": "2025-03-28T12:34:56Z" }
  ]
}

In addition, each data point should include an attribute that indicates the timestamp of the data in a supported format, such as ISO-8601. The Batch Write feature must be used in combination with the Harvest Data Timestamp Overwrite feature, which will use this attribute to save the data to the provided timestamp. In this example, the timestamps are found in the time attribute of each data point.

Additional Information

For more details, please refer to the Batch Write documentation documentation.

Prices for SORACOM Air plan-D (Data-only) IoT SIM cards (Nano, Micro, and Standard) will be revised as follows:

• Old price: 850.3 yen (tax included)
• New price: 871.2 yen (tax included)

The new price will take effect on April 3, 2025.

Please note that the updated price does not include shipping and handling fees.

Prices for other SIMs, including SORACOM Air plan-D (Data/SMS) and SORACOM Air plan-D D-300MB, remain unchanged.

For more information on purchasing, please click here.

We are pleased to announce that the IoT Wireless Unit Dry Contact Converter OWU-111S from OPTEX Company is now available in the Soracom IoT Store.

The OWU-111S features:

• 2-channel input that supports contact and pulse signals, allowing you to adapt existing sensors and switches into IoT projects.
• IPX5 waterproof construction, suitable for outdoor usage.
• Battery-powered, enabling easy deployment without the need to set up an external power source.

IoT Wireless Unit Dry Contact Converter OWU-111S

• Available countries and regions: Japan
• Compatible Soracom service: SORACOM Air for Sigfox
  • A separate contract administrative fee and communication charges will apply.
• Price: ¥55,000 (tax included, shipping separate)

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