NuMaker-IoT-M263A board is the Swiss army knife of IoT development

If you’d like an MCU board to experiment with various wireless (and wired) protocols used for Internet of Things applications, the Nuvoton NuMaker-IoT-M263A development board may be worth a look.

Powered by a NuMicro M263KIAAE Arm Cortex-M23 CPU microcontroller, the board offers WiFi, Bluetooth, and LoRa connectivity, plus an mPCIe socket for 3G, 4G, or NB-IoT cellular connectivity. It also comes with various sensors, as well as CAN and RS485 transceivers for industrial control applications.

NuMaker-IoT-M263A key features and specifications:

MCU – Novoton NuMicro M263KIAAE Arm Cortex-M23 microcontroller @ 64 MHz with 96KB SRAM, 512 KB dual-bank flash for OTA upgrade, 4 KB LDROM; LQFP128 package
Storage – MicroSD card connector
On-board wireless modules
- ESP12-F (ESP8266) 802.11b/g/n module
- MDBT42Q-PAT Bluetooth 4.2/5.0 LE module
- APC1278 (for 408 / 433 / 470 MHz) LoRa module plus antenna
Serial – CAN and RS485 transceiver
USB – 1x Micro USB OTG connector (to M263 MCU)
Sensors
- BME680 4-in-1 air quality sensor measuring relative humidity, barometric pressure, ambient temperature, and gas (VOC) levels
- BMX055 9-axis accelerometer, gyroscope, and magnetometer
Expansion
- Mini PCIe socket with SIM card connector tested with Quectel BG96/EC21 3G/4G/NB-IoT cards
- Arduino UNO compatible headers
Debugging – On-board Nu-Link2-Me debugger and programmer with SWD interface, on-line /off-line programming, and Virtual COM port function
Misc – Various LEDs and buttons,
Power Supply
- External VDD (5V) power connector
- Arduino UNO compatible extension connector VIN
- USB OTG connector on M263 platform
- ICE USB connector on Nu-Link2-Me
- Power jack for mini PCIe connector
- Ammeter connector for measuring the microcontroller’s power consumption

The board can be programmed with KEIL MDK Nuvoton edition M0 / M23, IAR EWARM, or NuEclipse (GCC) for Windows or Linux and corresponding USB drivers. You’ll find more information and links to documentation in the Getting Started guide.

NuMaker-IoT-M263A board can be used to develop applications for other M263 microcontrollers with different I/O configurations, packages, and price points.

NuMicro M263 Microcontroller Block Diagram — M263 MCU Block Diagram

Those are generic purpose MCUs with Armv8-M core with TrustZone security, and as we can see from the devkit specifications and block digram there’s no built-in wireless connectivity inside the chip itself.

NuMaker-IoT-M263A development board can be purchased directly from the Nuvoton store for $100.

Via CTimes

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.