SenseCAP M2 4G using way more data than it should

Products & Technology SenseCAP
#1

I’m evaluating the SenseCAP M2 4G for a large scale commercial project that will read sensors and push the data to a private LoRaWAN portal on AWS through a cellular connection. I was able to setup the gateway and a single S102 to push one reading every four hours. The data is being delivered to the backend, so issue there. I assumed this setup would be consuming kilobytes of data per day. Instead it’s using over 10MB of 4G data per day! I don’t think I can make the numbers work if I need a 2 gigabyte data plan for each gateway.

Is this normal operation or is there a settings I’m missing? I’ve attached a plot of the wwan0(lte) traffic. No sensor data was sent during this period, yet there is a lot of traffic.

cellular traffic
cellular traffic1292×859 96.3 KB

#2

I decided to run the same sensors through a Multitech gateway with a SIM card. The data usage is about what I would expect. 100 - 200KB for the day instead of the 10-20MB for the SenseCAP M2.

Is my SenseCAP gateway still attempting to do some Helium stuff despite not being set up for it? I noticed that on the main status page, it lists “Active Connections: 106/16384” under the network area. I have no idea what that is. It’s not listed in any manual.

#3

Hi, the SenseCAP M2 gateway will download a program of about 10MB after every reboot, so it’s not recommended to reboot it frequently.

1 Like
#4

Hey @Jessie1_SenseCAP,

can we somehow deactivate this?

We’ve got a 1nce SIM Card in our SenseCAP M2 LTE at a customer with 500MB Data, which should be plenty of data volume.

But we also struggle with the large amount of Data the M2 uses for calling Servers on your end.

best regards,
Benjamin

1 Like
#5

are you the same jessie from seeed discord?

#6

Hi there,
Curios if that info is in the documents, if so where?
Really should be something to turn off, IMO. or at least limit to an initial boot first time, then optional after. IMO.
GL :slight_smile: PJ :v:

#7

sounds like everytime i rebook microsoft … they have to upload my emails to the cloud

#8

Hi,
I have a similar data usage profile. I have my gateways configured with local network mode with and 2 lorawan devices. The gateway is always connected with the sensecap portal and transmit recurrent data to it. To match my m2m data contract, I need to disable some features to reduce the data usage. How can I do it ?

Regards,
Ben

#9

Interesting question

#10

I ended up abandoning the SenseCAP gateway altogether and just using the Multitech hardware. Any savings I had from the initial hardware cost was lost after a few months of SIM data costs.

#11

Can you connect it to wifi?

#12

Maybe did you have your sensor reporting too frequently? thats why the limit is 5 minutes

#13

It’s really a shame to put so much effort into having a good gateway at a very competitive price and to be blocked by software configurations. It would be nice to provide a new version of the OS with choices regarding data usage. For example, deactivating the check for updates at regular intervals, deactivating the link with the sensecap portal, etc.

Or provide a community version of the OS to allow the customer to customize the OS.

I hope I don’t have to make the same decision as you.

#14

The gateway, even without an object, has excessive data consumption.

1 Like
#15

thanks for the information