Arduino Introduces Two New IoT Boards – MKR WiFi 1010 (ESP32) and MKR NB 1500 (NB-IoT + eMTC)

Arduino introduced its MKR family of breadboard compatible maker boards with MKR1000 featuring an Atmel SAMD21 microcontroller combined with a Microchip WINC1500 WiFi module.

The board was followed by MRKZero without wireless connectivity,  then MKRFOX1200 Sigfox board, and finally MKR WAN 1300 & MKR GSM 1400 boards at the end of 2017 with LoRaWAN and 3.75G cellular connectivity.

The company has now launched two new boards: Espressif ESP32 based MKR WiFi 1010 with WiFi and Bluetooth, and MKR NB 1500 equipped with an NB-IoT & LTE CAT M1 module.

Arduino MKR WiFi 1010

MKR WIFI 1010 is an evolution of the MKR1000 board, and is equipped with a U-Blox ESP32 module. Preliminary specifications:

• MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256 KB flash memory
• Wireless Connectivity – 2.4 GHz 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.2 LE via U-blox NINA-W10 Series module based on ESP32 processor.
• I/Os
  • 8x digital I/Os
  • 12x PWM pins
  • 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
  • 7x analog input pins
  • 1x analog output pin
  • 8x external interrupts
  • Operating voltage – 3.3V
  • DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA
• USB – micro USB port for power and programming
• Security – ECC508 CryptoAuthentication device
• Misc – RTC, power and charge LEDs
• Power Supply
  • 5V only via USB or VIN pin
  • Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
• Dimensions – 61.5 mm x 25 mm

The board is compatible with the Arduino IT cloud, and both the Microchip Arm MCU and Espressif ESP32 processors are programmable. The addition of Microchip ECC508 enables hardware crypto authentication to secure TLS network communications and connections.

Arduino MKR NB 1500

The second board is the first official Arduino board supporting NB-IoT and/or eMTC low power cellular IoT standards.

Preliminary specifications:

• MCU – Microchip SAMD21 Cortex-M0+ MCU @ 48 MHz with 32KB SRAM, 256 KB flash memory
• Wireless Connectivity – NB-Iot and LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) via U-blox SARA-R410M module, Nano SIM card socket
  
• I/Os
  • 22x digital I/Os including 12x PWM pins
  • 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
  • 7x analog input pins
  • 1x analog output pin
  • 8x external interrupts
  • 1x I2S
  • Operating voltage – 3.3V
  • DC Current per I/O Pin – 7 mA
• USB – micro USB port for power and programming
• Misc – RTC, power and charge LEDs
• Power Supply
  • 5V only via USB or VIN pin
  • Li-Po single cell, 3.7V, 700mAh minimum
• Dimensions – 61.5 mm x 25 mm

Both boards are compatible with other MKR boards, and are expected to launch in June 2018, but pricing has not been disclosed so far. You may register your interest and potentially find some extra details on the respective Arduino store pages for MKR 1010 WiFi and MKR NB 1500.