Particle Industries Inc., an IoT Platform-as-a-Service company, has announced a new line of multi-radio boards and modules that offer multiple connectivity options in a single product. Particle is a complete edge-to-cloud IoT development platform that offers hardware products and software tools for creating IoT solutions. The company’s latest product, the M-series, has a bold tagline: connect anywhere. Although wireless connectivity has come a long way, there is no single wireless technology that works everywhere. Particle’s M-series aims to address that problem by bundling multiple radios – Wi-Fi, cellular, satellite, and LoRaWAN – into one product. Particle is looking to expand from its two primary wireless technologies: Wi-Fi and cellular, and add two more radios, satellite and LoRaWAN, for broader coverage. These two radios will cover devices in areas such as enclosed spaces (boiler rooms, elevator shafts, basements, and mines) and remote locations (methane sensors in oil and gas plants, boats, […]
Monitor One – A customizable cellular IoT gateway for industrial equipment monitoring
Particle’s Monitor One Developer Edition is a customizable cellular IoT gateway for monitoring industrial equipment packaged in an IP67 rugged enclosure with reference firmware, and suitable for rapid prototyping with support for a range of I/Os and sensors, and even a prototyping area for to solder your own circuitry. Like the company’s earlier Tracker One asset tracker, the Monitor One is based on the Tracker SoM with a Nordic Semi nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4 wireless SoC for Bluetooth connectivity, a Quectel LTE Cat M1 (North America) or Cat 1 with 3G and 2G fallback (EMEA), u-blox Neo-M8U GNSS module, and an ESP32 for WiFi location support. The new customizable cellular IoT gateway still integrates with the Particle IoT PaaS (Platform as a Service), and the company also provides developer tools. The Monitor One Developer Edition is comprised of the following items: Monitor One base model fitted with a Particle Tracker SoM […]
Particle launches Photon 2 Realtek RTL8721DM dual-band WiFi and BLE IoT board, Particle P2 module
Particle has launched the Photon 2 dual-band WiFi and BLE IoT board powered by a 200 MHz Realtek RTL8721DM Arm Cortex-M33 microcontroller, as well as the corresponding Particle P2 module for integration into commercial products. The original “Spark Photon” WiFi IoT board was launched in 2014 with an STM32 MCU and a BCM43362 wireless module, but the market and company name have changed since then, and Particle has now launched the Photon 2 board and P2 module with a more modern Cortex-M33 WiFi & BLE microcontroller with support for security features such as Arm TrustZone. Particle Photon 2 specifications: Wireless MCU – Realtek RTL8721DM CPU – Arm Cortex-M33 core @ 200 MHz Memory – 4.5MB embedded SRAM of which 3072 KB (3 MB) is available to user applications Connectivity – Dual-band WiFi 4 up to 150Mbps and Bluetooth 5.0 Security Hardware Engine Arm Trustzone-M Secure Boot SWD Protection Wi-Fi WEP, […]
IoThing Digital IO board handles up to 300V for Arduino, Raspberry Pi, and various other boards (Crowdfunding)
AlterStep’s IoThing Digital is a digital I/O module with two high-power Omron G5Q-14 relays and two isolated AC or DC input channels based on Texas Instruments ISO1211 that can handle up to 300 V. The board also integrates a DC-DC converter and mikroBUS slot that allows it to be used with compatible MCU boards, and the company also provides adapters for popular form factors such as Arduino, Raspberry Pi, Adafruit Feather, Teensy, and others. IoThing Digital specifications: mikroBUS socket for mikroElektronika Click expansion boards BOKRA Lite MCU boards (Some details below) 2x Omron G5Q-14 SPDT relays – 3A/30V DC or 3A/250VAC via terminal blocks Terminal block for 2x digital outputs configurable from 9V to 300V, DC and AC PCF8574 8-bit I/O expander chip with I²C bus for relay control and digital signal input I2C interface with support for 100 KHz and 400 KHz, address selection via jumpers Grove I2C connector […]
Microsoft Azure IoT, Balena, Particle, or Toit – Choosing the Right IoT Development Platform
With the ongoing fourth Industrial Revolution (Industry 4.0), IoT technologies are playing a major role in automating industrial processes. Integrating existing systems with IoT results in an intelligent solution that focuses more on providing better adaptability and resource efficiency. If you start building such systems from scratch while ensuring reliability and other factors, it will surely take a lot of research and time. This is where an IoT development platform steps in to save your time and makes things a lot easier. The main idea behind these platforms is to avoid reinventing the wheel and to provide standardized functions and features, so you don’t waste your time implementing something that someone has already done for you. You can collect data, control and manage apps and connect to their cloud services for better machine-to-machine communication. This article will look at some modern IoT development platforms and finally compare them to help […]
Particle Takes Pre-orders for its Cellular Tracking SoM, Evaluation Kit, and Tracker One Asset Tracker
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 […]
Particle Tracking System Offers Software, Hardware LTE IoT Module and Tracker in Turnkey Solution
Particle’s first cellular M2M module was launched in 2015 when the company was still called Spark IO. Since then they’ve offered new modules and boards supporting recent standards like NB-IoT and/or LTE Cat-M with product likes Boron and E series castellated modules. The company found out that most of their customers used their boards for asset tracking despite many off-the-shelf products already available, and the main reason was the ability to customize the solution. To help their customers, the company has now launched the Particle Tracking System combining a software suite with LTE IoT system-on-module and Tracker One reference product to ease the development and deployment of customized asset tracking solutions. Particle Tracking System is comprised of three main components relying on the existing Particle IoT platform: Particle Tracking Services software suite with geolocation services (mapping and geodatabase), fleet-wide device management, an open device firmware application framework to integrate with […]
Giveaway Week Winners – November 2019
We just had another of our yearly “Giveaway week” on CNX Software with 7 prizes including Arm and RISC-V development boards, NB-IoT tracker, USB-C hub, as well as development kits based on ESP32 or ESP8266 WiSoCs. People just had to comment within a 48 hours period, and we would randomly select a winner each day. We now have all confirmed winners with a strong start from Europe, Asia catching up mid-week, before with Poland and Brazil taking the week-end prizes: Balena Fin Developer Kit – Laurent H, FRANCE WisCellular NB-IoT & eMTC GPS Tracker – Jimmy, SWEDEN MINIX NEO S1 USB-C Hub with 120GB built-in SSD – Jeroen, BELGIUM Maixduino Sipeed M1 RISC-V AI Kit – Nguyen Tung, VIETNAM ANAVI Gas Detector Starter Kit – Bumsik Kim, SOUTH KOREA Particle Mesh IoT Development Kit – Wojciech Lubicz-Lapinski, POLAND NanoPi M4V2 SBC & Metal Case Kit – Thiago Tavares, BRAZIL I […]