Arduino GPRS Shield

Introduction

The GPRS Shield is based on SIM900 module from SIMCOM and compatible with Arduino and its clones. The GPRS Shield provides you a way to communicate using the GSM cell phone network. The shield allows you to achieve SMS, MMS, GPRS and Audio via UART by sending AT commands (GSM 07.07 ,07.05 and SIMCOM enhanced AT Commands). The shield also has the 12 GPIOs, 2 PWMs and an ADC of the SIM900 module(They are all 2V8 logic) present onboard.

Features

• Quad-Band 850 / 900/ 1800 / 1900 MHz - would work on GSM networks in all countries across the world.
• GPRS multi-slot class 10/8
• GPRS mobile station class B
• Compliant to GSM phase 2/2+
• Class 4 (2 W @ 850 / 900 MHz)
• Class 1 (1 W @ 1800 / 1900MHz)
• Control via AT commands - Standard Commands: GSM 07.07 & 07.05 | Enhanced Commands: SIMCOM AT Commands.
• Short Message Service - so that you can send small amounts of data over the network (ASCII or raw hexadecimal).
• Embedded TCP/UDP stack - allows you to upload data to a web server.
• RTC supported.
• Selectable serial port.
• Speaker and Headphone jacks
• Low power consumption - 1.5mA(sleep mode)
• Industrial Temperature Range - -40°C to +85 °C

Specifications

Application Ideas

• M2M (Machine 2 Machine) Applicatoions.
• Remote control of appliances.
• Remote Weather station or a Wireless Sensor Network.
• Vehicle Tracking System with a GPS module.

Cautions

• Make sure your SIM card is unlocked.
• The product is provided as is without an insulating enclosure. Please observe ESD precautions specially in dry (low humidity) weather.
• The factory default setting for the GPRS Shield UART is 19200 bps 8-N-1. (Can be changed using AT commands).
• NewSoftLibrary library only support baudrate under 38400bps, it may lose data while communicate over 38400bps.
• The standard NewSoftSerial library doesn't have support for receive on the Mega. Bhagman has written a new version of NewSoftSerial that has this support:

http://www.arduino.cc/cgi-bin/yabb2/YaBB.pl?num=1287382108

http://code.google.com/p/rogue-code/downloads/detail?name=NewSoftSerial10c-withMegaAndStream.zip

He've tried this new library. One limitation is that it only works on pins that support interrupts(Pin11,12), so on the Mega it only works on Hardware UART.

• The default Buffer of Rx in NewSoftSerial.h is 32, you may experience some data lose while the returns of SIM900 are many(Receiving SMS/TCPIP), you can try to change the Buffer of Rx in NewSoftSerial.h into