M5Stack is known for its ESP32 based building blocks for the IoT with WiFi & Bluetooth wireless connectivity, I/O headers, and block-specific features like a tiny color display, a speaker, a touchscreen display, a camera, and more.
The company’s latest product is the M5Stack Atom DTU LoRaWAN Kit based on ESP32 ATOM Lite, as well as ASR Micro ASR6501 LoRa module (SX1302 based) and one RS485 header that allows for industrial communication notably with the Modbus protocol.
- Wireless connectivity
- M5Stack ATOM Lite with ESP32 WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2/5.x dual-core SoC
- ASR ASR6501 LoRa chip
- Operating frequency – 868MHz or 915 MHz
- Transmit power – Up to +21dBm
- RX sensitivity – Up to -137dBm (SF=12/BW=125KHz)
- Serial communication – UART 115200bps (AT command) via ESP32
- Antenna – SMA antenna connector
- Power consumption @ 3.3V (from ASR6501 datasheet)
- Tx @ +21dBm – 106 mA
- Rx – 10 mA
- Sleep mode – 2 to 3.1 nA
- Industrial communication – RS485 with 12V input interface, internal integrated DCDC step-down 5V; Modbus Master/slave
- Expansion – 1x I2C Grove connector
- Dimensions – 64 x 24 x 29 mm
- Weight – 32 grams
The kit also ships with an SMA antenna, a red cap to protect the antenna connector, an M.2 hexagon wrench, an M2 screw, and a 4-pin terminal block to insert into the RS485 header/connector.
There are two mounting options with a hook and a “self-contained rail clamping”. Typical applications for the Atom DTU (Data Transmission Unit) include automatic remote meter reading, intelligent traffic intelligent parking lot, remote irrigation and environmental monitoring, and more.
You’ll find hardware documentation including schematics on M5Stack documentation website, and the company provides a C++ API, and a sample Arduino sketch connecting to a LoRaWAN gateway using the OTAA method on Github.
Both the 868 MHz (EU) and 915 MHz (US) versions are sold for $32.50 on M5stack online shop.If LoRaWAN is not convenient for your use case/location, and you’d rather use cellular IoT connectivity with NB-IoT, M5Stack is offering the very similar Atom DTU NB-IoT Kit Global version based on SIM7020G modem for $36.90.
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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