A 4G level transmitter replaces the cable run with a cellular link — no trenching, no gateway, no PLC. The trade is that a good reading now depends on three things a wired install never worried about: usable signal, correct APN settings, and a power budget that survives winter. This guide walks the whole commissioning sequence for our solar 4G units, from SIM card to alarm threshold.
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Before ordering anything, confirm the site can actually support a cellular instrument. Four checks decide whether the install works on day one:
Hold a phone on the same carrier at the mounting point and check you get at least two bars of 4G. A reading taken in the office tells you nothing about a metal tank in a valley.
Match the modem band to the local network (Band 3/8 in most of Asia, 700/850/1900 MHz in North America). A unit bought for the wrong region will register but drop constantly.
Solar plus battery for outdoor tanks; mains for indoor cabinets. The panel and battery are sized from your reporting interval, not from tank height.
An IoT/M2M SIM with a small monthly allowance is enough — this device sends kilobytes, not video. A consumer SIM can work but often sits behind CGNAT.
The modem needs to know which carrier network to attach to. On most 4G level units the settings are entered over Bluetooth or the local config app, then pushed to the unit:
| Setting | Typical value | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| APN | Carrier-specific (e.g. internet, m2m, iot) | Get this from the SIM provider, not from a forum. A wrong APN is the single most common cause of “registered but no data”. |
| Username / password | Usually blank | Only some M2M APNs require credentials; leave empty unless the carrier states otherwise. |
| Server address & port | Cloud platform endpoint | Pre-configured on our units; only change it if you host your own server. |
| Reporting interval | 5 min – 24 h | Drives both data usage and battery draw. See section 06. |
| Heartbeat | 1 – 6 h | A short “I’m alive” packet so the platform can flag a dead unit even between reports. |
Outdoor 4G units run on a solar panel plus a lithium battery. The only design decision is whether the panel can recharge the battery through your worst month, and that is driven entirely by the reporting interval:
Best for Panels facing true south (northern hemisphere) at 30–45° tilt, clear of the tank shadow and of any overhanging structure.
Watch out Winter sun angles and shorter days — a panel that is generous in August can be marginal in December. Size for the worst month, not the average.
Work out daily consumption: radio transmit peak plus sleep-mode draw times 24 h, then divide by usable battery depth-of-discharge.
Choose a panel rated at least 2× the daily consumption so a cloudy week still ends with a charged battery.
Lithium capacity drops below 0 °C. In cold climates mount the battery in an insulated box or specify a low-temperature pack.
Where grid power exists, a 24 V DC supply removes the whole calculation and lets you report every minute.
Wiring polarity, surge protection and glanding follow the same rules as any field instrument — see the wiring guide.
The measurement side of a 4G unit is identical to the wired version — the radio is just an extra box. Get the sensor part right first:
Centre of the tank, plumb, clear of inlets and agitators. The radar or ultrasonic rules in the installation guide apply unchanged.
Keep the 4G antenna outside the metal tank shadow — on top of the housing, vertical, never wrapped around the probe or inside a steel cabinet.
Weatherproof every entry; point glands downward so water cannot track along the cable into the enclosure.
Set the level range before going wireless, so the first reading you see on the platform is already in engineering units.
Once the unit registers, the platform does the boring work. The parts worth configuring deliberately:
Enter the unit’s serial / IMEI into the platform and confirm the first heartbeat. One device per tank — rename it to the site, not the serial number.
Choose level (m or ft), volume, or percentage. Volume requires a tank profile — see our volume conversion tables.
Set high-high, high, low and “no data” alarms. The last one matters most: it catches a dead unit, a flat battery or a lost SIM.
SMS or email to two people, not one. Add an escalation delay so a brief filling spike does not page the plant at 3 a.m.
Daily and monthly CSV exports give you the consumption record without manual dipping — and prove delivery volumes to a customer.
A typical report packet is a few hundred bytes, so data cost is rarely the constraint — battery life is. This is the trade-off table we use when advising customers:
| Reporting interval | Approx. data / month | Battery impact | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Every 1 min | ~15–30 MB | Mains or large solar | Pump control, fast-filling tanks |
| Every 15 min | ~2–5 MB | Moderate solar | Process tanks, delivery monitoring |
| Every 1 h | < 1 MB | Small solar / battery | Storage tanks, remote reservoirs |
| Every 6 h + heartbeat | ~50–100 KB | Very small solar | Seasonal tanks, level trend only |
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