Today the New York Times' David Pogue reviewed the Truconnect 3G internet service and a couple of devices that can be used to connect to it. At $4.99/month and a flat rate of $0.039 per megabyte, the cost is very much in keeping with the home monitor recurring cost goals.
100MB/month would cost $4.99+$3.90 = $8.89, which is less than the approximately $10.00 I now pay for AT&T sim usage for 1000 text messages. Plus, there is much more flexibility with an internet connection.
The Truconnect 3G devices are a Mifi WiFi hotspot ($79.99) and a USB GSM modem ($59.99.)
The monitor design concept is to have a laptop connected to the internet via Truconnect, and to home monitoring devices like the Arduino or JeeLabs sensors/actuators. The monitor software could be very simple: just periodically store sensor data in files in a Dropbox folder, and read them using any browser or iPhone (with Dropbox installed.)
A webcam can also be used to capture photos of the property and place them in the folder. A fair quality photo can be created using only 50KBytes. That's 0.05 MBytes, so 2000 can be captured and saved per month using only 100 MBytes. That's about 66 per day.
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