Monnit Update – the New Alta Sensors – Gen 1 Sunsetting December 31, 2021
While we have done many reviews of the Monnit Remote Monitoring solution, it is worth nothing that the Gen 1 sensors will no longer be available after December 31, 2021. A call to Kathy at Monnit confirmed that they have a limited stock of Gen 1 sensors in stock (dozens, not hundreds) so if you are a Gen 1 user like we are then you need to order quickly else you will be force to get your sensors from New Old Stock or used (Ebay Etc.).
Richard Berk (Executive Producer) and Scott Kraft (Tech Producer) have worked closely with BingABang LLC a Monnit VAR, who primary provides monitoring for remote short-term rentals. A case study that Utah Channel 3 did in 2016 when, Monnit was an emerging company, focused on a Brian Head condo project. In this project, BingABang installed over 150 sensors that monitored temperature and water in various high-risk condos managed by www.rbself.com. All such condos are located at Copper Chase (www.copperchase.com) and the results of this project have been highly successful.
Other than the Gen-1 sunsetting, it should be noted that the 3G gateways are about to be obsolete. Verizon which originally announced Feb 2021 as 3G cut-off has reconsidered and now claims Dec 31, 2022 will be the final day of 3G. AT&T has set Feb 2022 as their last day of 3G. US Cellular has made no firm announcement but based upon their market focus and service of many older devices we could see US Cellular staying with 3G for 2 or 3 more years at a minimum.
The following are updates for Verizon and US Cellular M2M rates. If you are still on 3G then you are married to the Monnit 3G router you have. But the Monnit 4G LTE routers use sim cards and thus can work with most carriers.
Note: Monnit never released a combination Eithernet / Cellular gateway solution as we previously announced in 2018. It just never happened, and a call to engineering said it is not currently a priority.
Please note that Verizon allows you to share data between any M2M device plan. So if you get a 1 MB plan for 10 devices and a 250 MB for one device, then all 11 devices will share 260 MB. This is a great deal. US Cellular is not so generous. They do let your devices share data but only if they are on the same data plan. This is a real disadvantage for most data users as it is nice to have a big bucket of data for when you get a run-away system or you have real urgent data and your Monnit Hearbeat goes to 10 minutes when you are in aware and you need such data real-time. You can quickly eat up data in such an urgent situation.
By, Scott Kraft – Tech Producer (TechTalk Host) & Richard Berk – Executive Producer