Wio LTE GPS Tracker Board Gets a Cat M1/NB1 Version for $59

Seeed Studio launched a family of GPS tracker boards staring with Wio GPS with 2G cellular connectivity, followed by Wio LTE board offering 4G connectivity several months later.

The company is taking pre-order for an LTE Cat M1/NB1 version with NB-IoT / eMTC connectivity, and going for $59 plus shipping. The board is expected to start shipping on July 25th.

Wio LTE Cat M1/NB1 board specifications:

• MCU – STMicro STM32F405RG Arm Cortex-M4 @ 168MHZ
  with 1M Flash, 192+4KB RAM
• Connectivity
  • LTE
    • uBlox SARA-R410M module
    • LTE CAT M1 and NB-IoT
    • Cat M1 Half-duplex (375 kb/s DL and
      UL)
    • Cat NB1 Half-duplex (27.2 kb/s DL, 62.5 UL)
    • Nano SIM and micro SD card 2-in-1 socket
  • GNSS
    • uBlox MAX-M8Q module
    • PS, BeiDou, GLONASS, and Galileo
    • 2.5m CEP(GPS), 4.0m CEP(GLONASS)
• USB – 1x micro USB port for power supply and DFU
• Expansions – Grove headers: 2x digital, 2x analog, 1x UART, 1x I2C
• Misc – Reset, user, and upload buttons
• Power Supply
  • 5V via micro USB port
  • JST 1.0 connector for battery
  • Operating voltage – 3.3V
  • Low power: Sleep / Standby modes / Stop
• Dimensions – 54.8 x 48 mm

The board can be programmed with Arduino, Mbed, and Espruino, but for now the dedicated Wiki mostly has information about hardware. I’d expect that as we move closer to the shipping date software documentation will be updated as they did for their other Wio GPS tracker board. The micro SD card slot is mostly used for data logging.

It’s unclear whether the cellular and GNSS antennas are included with the board or need to be purchased separately. Seeed Studio also promotes the $5 Twilio SIM card to use with the board. Twilio appears to be a global cellular IoT services similar to Hologram.

Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft)

Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.

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