Hi everyone,
I’m looking at potentially deploying a Raspberry Shake in an area where LTE will be the only available connectivity. Getting internet to the shake won’t be a problem but the data usage will be.
My main question was is there a number or estimate of how much data a shake will use in about a month. I assume that a 4D would use more data then a 1D due to more sensors on the Shake thus more data being used correct? I was originally looking at an unlimited data plan but that’s upwards of $100 USD per month which is a little out of my monthly budget. I’m now looking at a more modest 25gb per month plan which I would assume would be enough for a shake regardless of model?
Any suggestions would be appreciated!
Thanks,
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Hello,
A very good project and we eagerly await to see what this new location will bring!
We have an estimate of various models’ data transfer rates here in our manual: Commonly Asked Questions — Instructions on Setting Up Your Raspberry Shake
For your 4D (and yes, you assumed correctly), you should expect a max data per month of ~14 GB and an average data per month of ~8.1 GB. Both well inside the 25 GB plan that you are considering and more than enough for any Shake model, as the 4D is the Shake that requires the most data capacity.
great thank you!
Regarding swarm however plan is to have the remote shake appear at home with use of a vpn. I did see that accessing data from the Shake via swarm can use more data, is there a exact number for that? (Not a network professional) but I would just assume that swarm would ‘listen’ to the incoming data from the shake?
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You’re welcome!
Yes, that sounds correct. I also think that SWARM will be actively listening to the Shake via the VPN address/port you will set up, so data consumption should not increase. The majority of the data will be incoming from the Shake to SWARM, and not vice-versa.
Sounds good, it might me a while before I have everything setup and running but I’ll be sure to update once everything is (hopefully) working 
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No problem atl all!
Also, another suggestion to limit data usage is that you can utilize our DataView portal https://dataview.raspberryshake.org/ to stream live data from your remote Shake. In this way, the data is simply going out from the Shake to our servers, maximizing your plan allowance.
If you prefer SWARM in the end, could you add if there is something in SWARM that you would see on DataView too? We never stop looking for ideas and feedback from our Shakers on how to improve our products!
Thank you again.
I would suggest DataView too. Using SWARM will increase your data. The data flow to the raspberryshake server is via an encrypted channel as far as I know, so you can’t piggyback on it.
Your VPN is another encrypted channel to you, carrying pretty much the same data. So you could be looking at doubling the data rate.
Give DataView a try. It has the added advantage that you can access the same data from anywhere on pretty much any browser.
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Thanks, I’ve briefly used data view in the past and have really only one minor suggestion but I’m not sure if they’re even under your control.
Occasionally on dataview the connection will drop to the shake or take awhile to load but again that could be a problem with the physical shake connecting to the internet.
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Thanks for the additional feedback, we will have a look at DataView regarding this particular point and see if there is anything on our side that we can improve.
However, yes, it is also possible that temporary data interruptions are due to Shakes losing and then reacquiring an internet connection, as all the data plotted in real-time would be affected by that.