We are excited to announce the launch of the new feature "Test Mode," which allows operators to conduct free communication tests during the manufacturing phase of IoT devices (prior to commercial use). This feature introduces a new IoT SIM status called "testing," which provides a special status where data communication and SMS usage fees are waived for a limited volume and duration.

About "testing" status

The "testing" status is designed for verifying the normal operation of products utilizing IoT SIMs during quality control processes. The following characteristics define this status:

• When an IoT SIM in the "ready" status communicates with Soracom, it automatically transitions to the "testing" status.
• Data communication and SMS usage fees are waived until the pre-set conditions (*1) are met.
• Once the pre-set conditions (*1) are satisfied, the status will automatically change to the next designated status.

(*1) Conditions include data communication volume, SMS send/receive count, and duration.

How to use

To utilize the "testing" status, prior application and approval from Soracom are required. Please contact us with the following information:

1. Operator ID for utilizing "testing"
2. Subscription for utilizing "testing"
3. Data communication volume, SMS send/receive count, and duration for which fees will be waived
4. The next status after "testing"

For more details, please refer to the IoT SIM status "testing" (Japanese).

We are pleased to announce that the following actions have been added to the Soracom User Console:

• Send command via HTTP/S
• Send command via SSH

Traditionally, sending cloud-to-device data or commands via IP communication has been difficult due to firewall and routing restrictions that require complicated network configurations or device-side applications.

These new actions are based on the previously announced Downlink HTTP and SSH APIs and allow you to send HTTP/HTTPS requests or SSH commands to your device and view the response from a device directly from the User Console

To use these actions, simply select a SIM, click Actions, select Send command via HTTP/S or Send command via SSH, and enter the command details.

Please note: Pricing for these actions is scheduled to be announced in June 2025. Until then, these actions are free to use.

For more information, please see the Remote Command documentation.

We have released a new Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) Network Diagnostic Tool to help you quickly check if your network is ready to support SoraCam.

Until now, making sure that your Wi-Fi network meets the necessary requirements for SoraCam required some technical know-how and manual testing, as described in the 3 Key Points to Check When Connecting SoraCam via Wi-Fi (Japanese) documentation.

Now, with this new tool, anyone can easily run a quick check. Just connect your smartphone or PC to the network you plan to use, open the SoraCam Network Diagnostic Tool (Japanese), and click the button to start the test.

The tool will check:

• If there's enough upload bandwidth for cloud video recordings.
• If the required network ports are open for communication.

If the tool finds any issues, we recommend checking with your network administrator to make the necessary adjustments.

For any questions or assistance, feel free to contact Soracom Support.

We are pleased to announce that support for the following advanced AI models has been added to Soracom Flux AI Actions:

• Azure GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1-mini, and GPT‑4.1-nano
• OpenAI GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1-mini, and GPT‑4.1-nano
• Amazon Bedrock - Anthropic Claude 3.7 Sonnet

These models are available starting today and can be selected when configuring Soracom Flux AI Action settings.

Note that the Azure GPT-4.1, GPT-4.1-mini, GPT-4.1-nano, and Amazon Bedrock - Anthropic Claude 3.7 Sonnet models will consume a number of credits per request.

On the other hand, OpenAI GPT‑4.1, GPT‑4.1-mini, and GPT‑4.1-nano models allow for providing your own license (API key) and therefore do not consume credits.

The number of credits consumed per request for the newly supported models is as follows.

(*1): These models allow you to use your own API key and therefore do not consume Flux credits.

For more information, see the Soracom Flux documentation.

Soracom Orbit is a bi-directional inline data processing service that allows you to write your own AssemblyScript, Rust, C/C++, or TinyGo function for modifying IoT device data as it is sent from or to a device and Unified Endpoint.

Previously, Orbit allowed for reading IoT SIM tags when executing your function. This lets you incorporate tag values into your function logic, such as appending the IoT SIM name to the data, or applying different data processing logic based on the value of a device model, firmware, or other tag.

With this update, Orbit now also allows for writing and deleting IoT SIM tags. This new functionality enables new use cases, such as updating an IoT device's tags based on the data it sends. You can then utilize existing User Console and Soracom API features such as searching for and sorting SIMs based on a specific tag to streamline SIM and device management workflows.

The Orbit SDKs have been updated for this new functionality. Below is a summary of updates for each SDK:

AssemblyScript SDK

• Added setTagValue(name: string, value: string): void
• Added deleteTag(name: string): void
• Added getOriginalRequest(): string

Rust SDK

• Added set_tag_value(name: &str, value: &str)
• Added delete_tag(name: &str)
• Added get_original_request() -> String

C/C++ SDK

• Added void soracom_set_tag_value(const char* name, const char* value)
• Added void soracom_delete_tag(const char* name)
• Added int32_t soracom_get_original_request_as_string(const char** buf, size_t* siz)
• Added void soracom_release_buffer(const char* buf)
• Deprecated void soracom_release_input_buffer(const char* buf) (use soracom_release_buffer() instead)
• Deprecated void soracom_release_userdata(const char* buf) (use soracom_release_buffer() instead)

TinyGo SDK

• Added func SetTagValue(name string, value string)
• Added func DeleteTag(name string)
• Added func GetUserdata() ([]byte, error)
• Added func GetOriginalRequest() ([]byte, error)

For additional details, refer to the Orbit: SDK Reference documentation.

We have expanded the set of characters that can be used when sending SMS messages to devices from the Soracom User Console or using the Soracom API/CLI.

Previously, when specifying GSM-7 (GSM 7-bit default alphabet) encoding, SMS messages only supported characters in the GSM-7 Basic Character Set. With this update, SMS messages can now include additional characters such as {, }, [, ], |, ^, and ~. The full list of supported characters is shown in the two tables below.

GSM-7 Encoding Basic Character Set

These are standard characters that are transmitted using 7 bits per character.

LF, CR, and SP represent the following control characters (with their Unicode code points):

• LF: Line Feed (U+000A)
• CR: Carriage Return (U+000D)
• SP: Space (U+0020)

GSM-7 Encoding Basic Character Set Extension

Note that these characters are sent using 14 bits per character (escape sequence 0x1B + extended character).

• FF represents the form feed character (U+21A1).

Please note that the interpretation and display of these characters on the device receiving the SMS message may vary depending on the device's implementation.

If you need to send characters that are not listed in the tables, consider using UCS-2 encoding.

We are excited to announce three new functions for customizing the output behavior of Flux Actions: Transform Data, Send event for each, and Delay.

Transform Data

The Transform Data function lets you customize the format of the data that will be sent to the next Flux channel, using data from both the action input and the action result. This allows you to remove any data in the action result that is unnecessary, as well as pass along data that was part of the original action input.

Send event for each

If data in an action result contains a JSON array, the Send event for each function lets you repeat subsequent actions for each item in the array. This allows you to generate multiple events from a single action, passing each item of the array as the action input data to the next Flux channel.

Delay

The Delay function allows you to set a duration (in seconds) that an action should wait before sending data to another channel. This allows you control of the timing of specific behavior, such as to ensure one action completes before another, or to adhere to rate limiting.

For more information, please refer to the Flux Action Output: Advanced Settings documentation.

We are excited to release a new Gadgets interface for the Soracom LTE-M Button, giving customers improved visibility and easier control over their buttons directly in the User Console.

Within this new interface, you can now view important information including your Soracom LTE-M Button's current mode, last connection, battery voltage, and other useful details. The interface also makes it easy to update button settings, such as changing the operation mode, configuring external accessories, and enabling additional options in order to take advantage of all of the Soracom LTE-M Button's features.

Gadgets UI Features

• View and manage all of your buttons in one place
• Check the connection, battery, and other status to identify problems quickly
• Configure button settings such as operation mode, external accessories, and other options
• Connect buttons to Soracom Beam, Soracom Funk, and Soracom Harvest Data for forwarding data to your web server, a cloud service, or simply storing directly on Soracom

For more information or to start managing your Soracom LTE-M Buttons with the new Gadgets interface, visit the Soracom LTE-M Button documentation.

We are pleased to announce the addition of the SoraCam Motion/Sound Detection event source to Soracom Flux.

This new event source allows you to run a Flux App when a Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) compatible camera detects motion or sound. With this new feature, customers can now build workflows based on real-world activity captured by SoraCam-compatible cameras.

To use this event source, please ensure that motion detection and sound detection features are enabled on the target SoraCam-compatible camera. For configuration instructions, refer to the SoraCam: Enable or disable motion detection recording documentation (Japanese).

For any questions or assistance, feel free to contact Soracom Support.

We have added the following new options to the Soracom Cloud Camera Services (SoraCam) video export API, making it easier to download and play back exported videos on a variety of devices.

MP3 audio codec

You can now use the audioCodec parameter to specify MP3 as the audio codec when exporting videos. This makes it possible to play the audio stream in cases where your play back device is not compatible with a SoraCam-compatible device's default audio codec.

Note: Selecting MP3 as the audio codec will consume twice the standard export duration amount.

MP4 video format

You can now use the archive parameter to choose whether or not to download exported videos directly as an MP4 file. Doing so allows you to play videos without the additional step of extracting ZIP files.

For additional details on these new options, refer to the exportSoraCamDeviceRecordedVideo API reference (Japanese).