SIM7000 LTE CAT-M1 NB-IoT Cellular + GPS + Antenna Shield Kit for Arduino (SIM7000A)

This works and is compatible with at least arduino uno boards as well as mega. I'm using off brand replicas and still works as intended... Main issues you may encounter: *** Make sure the solder joints on the header pins are solid. I had slightly week solder points originally, and while it worked great originally on the uno, when I swapped to the mega (for more global memory storage), the mega board headers were slightly off center enough to apparently put tension on the pins from the botletics sim to break solder joints and it could no longer communicate with the board properly. *** Need an external battery specific for the board. Make sure it's proper capacity, volts, as well as polarity (a lot of these battery sizes are reversed from the board polarity connector). Once those 2 main issues were taken care of, was able to successfully communicate with the board using a free hologram sim card (US for the US botletics board). Tracks GPS location great, and even gained connection quickly while indoors). Only issues I seem to be having is on hologram side where there is sometimes delays of up to hours for receiving SMS messages on the sim. Not sure what the deal was. When I was first testing the board, seemed like messages sent pretty quickly up to longest average was about a min, but seemed to slow down over time. It is not an issue with board connection, as I can manually trigger the arduino to make an http post sending gps data to web, and that is completed within seconds to simultaneously MQTT server as well as webhooks. Have to assume it's on hologram side with only SMS data, which is a bummer, as it was pretty cool being able to control the device with my phone, albeit, not necessary for my project. Unfortunately, do not think there really are that many other options for iot sims in the US that don't cost a lot for single device uses, as there really only seems to be 1 mobile carrier that supports these... att/tmboile. Edit 2022/2023: I had switched webhook providers from IFTTT to other service, and https connection was no longer working. Turns out the gsm sim shield was defective. Botletics was contacted via forum/email and after hours of troubleshooting, a refurbished, but known working shield was sent and it worked with https webhook requests right away. Also, recently been having a lot of data/gps connection issues, might be related to Hologram as they've had a lot of service disruptions with their provider a lot in the mid part of 2023 and continued into 3rd quarter. Again, not exactly sure if my issue is related to that or shield/board/code issues. Also changed my arduino setup/project a bit and might have started having power supply issues, so my issue could be non-related to specifically the gsm shield.

I'll admit, the learning curve is pretty steep, but this board works great. I paired it with an old Duemilanove board (which apparently is missing the SDA and SCL pins) and got it to work with one of the example LTE demo sketches right away using the free pilot SIM card from Hologram. To get it to work with Adafruit IO, I actually had to step up the processor to a SAMD chip (I have an Adafruit Feather M0 for the job), since the 328 chip only has 32KB of memory and the sketch pushed past that limit. Arduino UNO boards apparently have a slimmer bootloader than my old Duemilanove, so it should work on an UNO. There are example sketches with SAMD boards. HTTP GET/POST works fine and MQTT works like a champ. The LTE antenna has worked everywhere I've tried it. The GPS antenna is pretty weak and only seems to work outdoors. An active antenna would be a good upgrade if you need better GPS functionality. Overall, this board has exactly what I wanted for my project. LTE, GPS, and a temperature sensor.

The board works well. Botletics offers support and has been very responsive. I upgraded to a powered gps antenna which works much better than the provided GPS antenna. Gets a signal more quickly. No problem with the supplied gsm antenna. Reception is not great in my area with a hologram sim, but outside is no problem. However that is not this board's fault. Before blaming the board consider reception in your area and software issues. I am happy so far, and any issues I was having were fixed by tweaking my Arduino code, and the gps antenna. I don't think it's fair to blame this board if the sim 7000a is not right for your area. If the chip and sim you choose works for your area or needs the pcb works well and makes implementation convenient.

Haven’t tested it yet, but I hope it works. Sensitive electronics should never to placed in a plastic bag without proper padding. Yes, it didn’t cost much, but if it is damaged the board is useless.