We are pleased to announce the launch of Soracom Cloud Camera Services, a cloud camera service that allows users to continuously record video content to the cloud.

To get started with cloud recording, purchase a compatible camera device (ATOM Cam 2) and a license from the Soracom IoT Store (Japanese), then follow the Getting Started instructions (Japanese) to set up your camera device.

• For more information on the features, see the ATOM Cam 2 product page (Japanese).
• For additional instructions on how to use the ATOM app and the Soracom User Console, see Soracom Cloud Camera Services (Japanese).

For further information on this release, please refer to the "Soracom Cloud Camera Services," a Cloud-based Always-on Recording Service for the IoT Era (Japanese) blog.

We are pleased to release a new Soracom X/Y Image panel that can use incoming sensor data as coordinates to position an image over a custom background that can be panned and zoomed.

The panel consists of a background and sensor images that are positioned using x and y coordinates obtained from device queries.

Input data can be mapped to any background by specifying maximum and minimum expected values for each device.

While the obvious use case is custom maps, the ability to translate device data into X/Y coordinates opens up the opportunity to display any kind of numerical data in unlimited ways.

The Soracom X/Y Image panel also introduces the ability to use Soracom Harvest Files as an image store directly from inside Lagoon, especially convenient when you would prefer to keep any image data private.

For more information, please refer to the Soracom X/Y Image documentation. (Japanese)

API keys and tokens generated using the Soracom API or CLI can now be revoked at any time using the following new APIs:

• Auth:logout
• User:revokeUserAuthTokens
• Operator:revokeOperatorAuthTokens

When generating an API key and token, you can specify a duration for which the token will remain valid. However, there was previously no way to manually revoke the token earlier than the valid duration once issued. In order to prevent an API key and token from being abused, you therefore had to specify a custom duration appropriate for your application.

With this update, an API key and token can be immediately revoked by calling the above APIs as soon as the key and token are no longer needed.

For more infomration, please refer to API Reference Guide.

Extended Discontinuous Reception (eDRX) and Power Saving Mode (PSM) timers are cellular network parameters that control the intervals at which a device wakes up to receive signals from the network. With LTE Cat-M1 (LTE-M) networks, these parameters can be increased in order to reduce the wake-up frequency and potentially improve battery life.

With this update, eDRX and PSM timers can now be configured directly within a group. When a Soracom SIM belonging to the group attaches to a cellular network, the eDRX and PSM timer parameters will be sent to the local network, allowing these parameters to be configured by the network without the need to modify device firmware.

This feature is currently available as a limited preview. In some cases, a local network may override eDRX and PSM timers regardless of the parameters sent by Soracom. If you are interested in using this feature, please contact us in order to request access.

For more information on LTE-M network availability, please refer to the Supported Carriers documentation.

We are pleased to release a new Billing Alert function. With this new function, a billing alert notification email will be sent automatically to the primary (root account) email address when your ongoing monthly bill total exceeds a specified amount.

By configuring an alert, you can be notified of unexpected charges that may occur due to abnormal data usage or other billable services, and proactively take control.

In addition, as the Billing Alert function uses Event Handler behind the scenes, a new "Monthly bill amount" Event Handler rule is now available. In addition to sending a notification email, you can configure a custom Event Handler rule to execute a webhook, invoke an AWS Lambda function, or perform other actions when your monthly bill total exceeds the threshold.

Please note that the ongoing monthly bill total is updated at regular intervals rather than in real time, so there may be some delay between the time the bill total exceeds the specified amount and when the notification email (or other actions if configuring a custom Event Handler) is sent.

For more information on enabling the Billing Alert function, please refer to the Billing Information documentation.

To set up a custom Event Handler rule, please refer to the Event Handler documentation.

We are excited to announce the release of a new subscription plan-K2! This subscription provides LTE and 5G coverage in Japan using KDDI.

The basic fee for plan-K2 is 330 JPY/month (tax included), and includes 300 MB of data traffic each month. Additional data charges apply if the amount of data used exceeds the included data.

plan-K2 is available as a 3-in-1 (standard, micro, and nano) SIM card as well as an embedded SIM (eSIM). For additional SIM details, please refer to the SORACOM IoT SIM Datasheet (Japanese).

To learn more about plan-K2, please refer to Soracom IoT SIM for Japan: Usage fees (Japanese).

Soracom Virtual Private Gateway (VPG) is a network service that allows customers to create a dedicated private network for their Soracom Air for Cellular and Soracom Arc devices. When creating a VPG, a set of global public IP addresses are dynamically assigned to the VPG in order to provide networking services, such as routing connections to the Internet. When an Air for Cellular or Arc device connects to a server, the connection will appear to come from one of these IP addresses. Since these IP addresses are dynamically assigned, they may change from time to time.

A Fixed Global IP Address option is available, which reserves the IP addresses assigned to the VPG. With this option enabled, connections from Air for Cellular or Arc devices will always use the same IP addresses. This makes it possible to set up a firewall on your server to only allow traffic from these IP addresses while blocking other traffic, and other access control security measures.

We are pleased to announce that this Fixed Global IP Address option, previously offered on a Limited Preview basis, has reached general availability (GA). You can now enable this option directly from your VPG settings.

Please refer to VPG: Fixed Global IP Address Option for configuration details, and to Pricing & Fee Schedule: Virtual Private Gateway for pricing information.

We are pleased to announce that our new planX3 subscription plan is now available as a Subscription Container which can be added to an existing plan01s SIM.

planX3 is a new global subscription plan that provides 2G, 3G, and 4G/LTE coverage in 89 countries, as well as LTE-M (LTE Cat-M1) coverage in 12 countries including Japan, Germany, France, and the United States.

For complete details on pricing and available countries and regions, please refer to SORACOM IoT SIM Pricing (Japanese).

Since planX3 is now available as a Subscription Container, you can add it to an existing plan01s SIM in order to gain access to the network coverage and pricing provided by planX3, without the need to purchase a physical planX3 SIM card or eSIM or to replace your current plan01s SIM.

Adding planX3 to an existing plan01s SIM

The planX3 Subscription Container can be added to any plan01s subscription from the User Console. Existing plan01s SIM cards and eSIMs are both supported.

For more information on Subscription Containers, device requirements, please refer to the Subscription Container documentation.

Soracom is pleased to announce the launch of planX3, a new global subscription plan with 2G, 3G, and 4G/LTE coverage in 89 countries and regions. planX3 also supports LTE-M (LTE Cat-M1) connectivity in 12 countries, including Japan, Germany, France, and the United States.

planX3 also features a simplified subscription price of USD $1/month, which includes 5 MiB of data traffic each month, making it ideal for small data volume applications. Pricing for additional data usage in excess of 5 MiB ranges from $0.073/MiB in Japan and APAC, to $0.037/MiB in the United States, and $0.02/MiB in major European countries.

For complete details on pricing and available countries and regions, please refer to SORACOM IoT SIM Pricing (Japanese).

Purchasing planX3

At this time, planX3 is only available to customers located in Japan. If you are located outside of Japan and are interested in purchasing planX3, please contact us.

For customers located in Japan, planX3 SIMs can be purchased from the SORACOM IoT SIM Card Type (planX3) (Japanese) product page. You can also purchase planX3 SIMs from the User Console (Japanese).

We are excited to announce that Binary Parser, a feature for Soracom Air devices that converts binary data into JSON, now supports MessagePack (hereafter MsgPack).

In many applications, a device may be configured to send data to a server or to the cloud using JSON format, often for compatibility with cloud services or simply to make the data easier to work with. However, sending data using JSON results in relatively high data usage due to JSON syntax requirements. MsgPack is a binary serialization format which allows a device to easily compress JSON data before it is sent, effectively reducing data usage.

Once data has been compressed and sent, it needs to be converted back to its original format so that a server or cloud service can understand it. With this update, you can now configure Binary Parser to convert MsgPack-compressed data back to JSON by simply entering @msgpack in the Binary Parser format setting. From there, the original JSON data can be sent to Soracom Harvest for storage and data visualization, or to Soracom Beam, Funnel, or Funk in order to forward the data to a server or a cloud service.

Since Binary Parser's conversion occurs after the data arrives at Soracom, cellular data usage can be reduced considerably.

Note: In order for Binary Parser to convert data, your device must be configured to send data to Unified Endpoint unified.soracom.io, or to the corresponding endpoint for Soracom Beam, Funnel, Funk, or Harvest. Data that is sent directly to a server or a cloud service will not be modified by Binary Parser.

MsgPack is available in more than 50 programming languages across many libraries, making it easy to implement in a wide variety of devices. For more information, refer to the official MessagePack site.

Custom Binary Parser formats can still be defined for bit-by-bit data conversion.