I have supported the SparQee project, which is now coming to getting some products on the market. But they seem rather pricey, but maybe they are good.
I was wondering if anyone would be interested in creating a Gadgeteer breakout for this, or if the xbee socket would work?
Ouch. That’s expensive.
The biggest draw back for me for any cellular module is the SIM. Unless you get a post pay contract SIM, you have to remember to top it up each month and if you don’t use many SMS, your money goes to waste as the networks want you to put on a minimum each month. It works out better if you use DATA as that has a fixed costs and it is basically what I use but even then you have to remember to top it up and often this can be done (out here anyway) through Internet banking or ATM. The downside is that you have to remember to top it up before the end date or the automatic continuation of the data tariff does not go through and you have to remove the SIM, put it in a normal phone and send USSD commands to activate it again.
PS… This is not compatible with the Xbee socket pinout so will need a special and that’s adding to the cost. The old Seeed Studio models are considerably cheaper in that case.