I have a Notecard device that sends 4 pieces of simple temp and humidity sensor data to note hub using periodic mode every 30 minutes and then routes it to an MQTT server using 4 routes, 1 route per piece of data (that’s how this Adafruit.io MQTT service works. I’m also looking into Ubidots. )
How can I determine if this device will last for the 10 year duration without paying for additonal credits?
Hey @tonyweil, are you asking about consumption credits (for sending data from Notehub to your MQTT server) or the Notecard’s 10 year, 500 MB data plan?
For consumption credits, if you’re sending four events every 30 minutes to your MQTT server, that’s 192 routed events (thus, consumption credits) per day or 5,760 per month. Your Notecard comes with 5,000 consumption credits included, and the Notehub Billing Account that Notecard is assigned to is topped-up to 5,000 credits each month, so as long as you keep the number of routed events under 5k per month, and you don’t have any other devices on that project or account, you can stay under the line. It might be worth checking out Ubidots (as you mentioned) and Datacake as you don’t need to send multiple events for those services.
If you’re looking to determine your data usage for the Notecard itself, I recommend checking out this doc and, once you’ve set-up your project to send data the way you plan to “live,” use the card.usage api to measure your data usage and project that out over 10 years. And along these lines, even if you are planning to stick with an approach of using multiple routes, you can put all of your readings in a single Notefile and use JSONata in each of your routes to isolate just the reading you want, and save yourself a bit of data on the cellular side.
Hope that helps!
I guess I was asking about both types of usage. Thanks for the answers.
This is a confusing point a bit. A Notecard comes with 5,000 consumption credits ← these are just one time credits? Where do they show up on the notehub? When I first read this it sounds like for each notecard you would accumulate 5000 credits per month 
Hi @mellerbeck,
A newly activated Notecard comes with a one-time credit of 5,000 consumption credits. This is beyond the 5,000/month credits that billing accounts are automatically allocated. The difference is the monthly credits are topped up each month, while the Notecard’s initial credits are not.
Your billing account is managed under the “Billing” tab in Notehub.
Thanks,
Rob
Would I violate any TOS by creating a new account per device? For example the gmail method of myaccount.device1@gmail.com myaccount.device2@gmail.com