Earlier this year, Particle announced its Tracking System turnkey solution comprised of Tracker SoM LTE IoT module, Tracker One asset tracker with enclosure, as well as Particle Tracking Services software suite with geolocation services, fleet management, and an open device firmware application framework to integrate with off-the-shelf IoT sensors and enable OTA firmware updates. The hardware devices were expected for June/July 2020, and the company has now started to take pre-orders for Tracker SoM, its evaluation kit, and Tracker One for respectively $79.99, $99.99, and $127.99. Shipping is expected to start in August 2020. We already covered Tracker SoM in our initial article with the full specifications, but basically, it’s a Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840 powered module with 8MB flash, ESP32 for WiFI (including support for indoor location), U-blox Neo-M8U GNSS module, and a choice of Quectel BG96 LTE CAT M1 module for the US or Quectel EG91-X CAT 1 module […]
Intel Atom P5900 “Snow Ridge” Processor to Power 5G Base Stations
Intel may have given up on developing 5G modems for mobile devices, but the company will still be participating in the ramping up of 5G technology by focusing on 5G infrastructure instead. So the company has just introduced the Atom P5900 “Snow Rigde” processor family designed for 5G wireless base stations requiring “high throughput, low latency processing for high-density network edge and security solutions”. The 10nm chips are offered with 8 to 24 cores based on the Tremont micro-architecture. There are four Atom P5900 “Snow Ridge” processors so far: Intel Atom P5921B 8-core processor @ 2.20 GHz with 9MB cache Intel Atom P5931B 12-core processor @ 2.20 GHz with 13.5MB cache Intel Atom P5942B 16-core processor @ 2.20 GHz with 18MB cache Intel Atom P5962B 24-core processor @ 2.20 GHz with 27MB cache P5912B supports up to 64GB ECC DDR4 memory, and other parts can handle up to 128GB RAM. […]
Giveaway Week – WisCellular NB-IoT & eMTC GPS Tracker
Rak Wireless WisCellular is an NB-IoT & eMTC Arduino shield based on Quectel BG96 module with 2G fallback that is similar to the company’s previous-generation WisLTE board, except it is certified for the global markets. I received a beta sample last year and went through the instructions to use it with a Hologram SIM card, but sadly I never managed to make it work, and eventually learned the Hologram SIM card did not support NB-IoT in Thailand. So I would have had to buy a local SIM card, but at the time, they didn’t sell those, and the only way to get an NB-IoT SIM card was to buy a development kit. Before going ahead with the purchase, I asked about coverage in my area but never managed to get a definitive answer so I gave up. So instead of keeping it in a drawer at home, I’d better just […]
Nordic Thingy:91 Cellular IoT Prototyping Platform Comes with 16 Sensors
Nordic Semiconductor launched the Nordic Thingy:52 back in mid-2017 in the hopes of bringing app and web developers into the hardware ecosystem as fast and easy as possible. The Nordic Thingy:52 was a Bluetooth 5 IoT sensor development kit based on the company’s nRF52832 WiSoC. Although the Nordic Thingy:52 kit is still very much available for purchase and support always available, Nordic Semiconductor has gone further launching a new development kit called the Nordic Thingy:91 targeting cellular IoT applications. The Nordic Thingy:91 is a cellular IoT prototyping platform with support for LTE-M, NB-IoT plus GPS option. Even though IoT connectivity standards like LoRaWAN, BLE, WiFi, ZigBee, and others are very much growing and expanding, Nordic Semi is fully backing cellular technology, something that has very much been available and most likely will still keep been available, and the adoption of 5G is another testimony to that. Cellular is here, and […]
hIoTron Launches Smart Cold Chain Management PaaS & Hi-Gate Tracker
The hIoTron monitoring system is designed to be middleware for smart cold chain systems, which can be found in food transport, pharmaceutical transport and even some chemical transport systems. We previously covered any product from the company in April of 2018 with the hIoTron modular and enterprise development kit that helps with prototyping of IoT devices. Cold Chain Systems The company has now developed a commercial product designed for one of the most sensitive platforms in supply chain management: the cold chain. A cold chain system is a distribution process that requires constant monitoring of a product’s surrounding environment while in transit or storage before or after transit. The actions and equipment in low-temperature ranges would be maintained at a constant between 2 and 8 ℃ (36 to 46 ℉) to maintain the integrity of the product, food, drug, or chemical, from harvest/production through to consumption. These complex systems can […]
Docker Pi IoT Node(A) Adds LoRa, GPRS and GPS to Raspberry Pi Board
The Docker Pi IoT Node(A) is the latest addition to the Docker Pi series of modules meant to enhance IoT capability and expand on the Raspberry Pi family of SBCs. Although it is mountable on the Raspberry Pi SBC, the HAT form factor allows it to be used with other similar single board computers such as Rock64 board. The Docker Pi IoT Node(A) supports GPS/BDS (Beidou), GSM, and LoRa. The add-on board interfaces to the host over I2C, in order to control LoRa & GSM connectivity, as well as the GPS/BDS module through SC16IS752 chip. There are a number of code examples and instructions that can be found on the Wiki. The unit can also be controlled directly without programming, and all the GPIO pins are extended so the board can stack on other HAT compatible boards, in appropriate layers. Specifications GPRS section Low power consumption, standby sleep current <1mA […]
$15 TTGO T-Call Board Combines ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth SoC with SIM800 GPRS Module
LilyGo has launched several TTGO boards usually based on Espressif ESP8266 or ESP32 over the years. Here’s another that could be useful if 2G cellular networks have not sunset in your country: TTGO T-Call. The new board combines ESP32 WiFi & Bluetooth WiSoC with SIMCom SIM800L GPRS module, and also happens to rely on a USB-C port for power and programming instead of the more common micro USB port on this type of hardware. TTGO T-Call board (BLINK_V1.3) specifications: Wireless Module – ESP32-WROVER-B based on ESP32 dual core Xtensa processor @ 240MHz with 520kB SRAM on-chip, 4MB QSPI flash, 8MB PSRAM Connectivity – WiFi 4 802.11 b/g/n (2.4 GHz) up to 150 Mbps Bluetooth 4.2 Classic + LE Cellular – 2G GSM/GPRS via SIMcom SIM800L module + Nano SIM card slot USB – 1x USB-C for power and programming (via CP2104) Expansion – 2x 21-pin headers with UART, SPI, SDIO, […]
S+ Camera Basic Combines Raspberry Pi 3 Board and LTE Shield for Edge Applications
Soracom is a company that provides global IoT network cellular connectivity for businesses in smart IoT agriculture, energy, consumer, manufacturing, transportation, and medical industries, and even provides free IoT SIM cards for evaluation (US/Canada only). The company has just announced the S+ Camera on its Japanese blog. The camera looks to features several off-the-shelf components including a Raspberry Pi 3 board and SixFab Raspberry Pi 3G-4G/LTE Base Shield V2 connecting to Soramcom network. It’s a little confusing as to why a cellular IoT company would develop an LTE camera since streaming video requires bitrates not normally associated with IoT. The blog post does provide a few more details however, as S + Camera is said to run SORACOM Mosaic software which enables “algorithms for edge processing cameras and management and operation of cameras”. That means it’s quite possible the video will not be streamed, but edge processing/computing usually means AI is […]