Giveaway Week – RAK Developer Kit (Air Quality Kit)

RAK Developer Kit Air Quality Kit

RAKwireless joined CNX Software’s Giveaway Week last year with the WisBlock Kit 2 LoRa-based GPS Tracker with Solar Panel, and the company is back for Giveaway Week 2022 with the RAK Developer Kit (Air Quality Kit) with LoRaWAN connectivity. The kit includes everything to get started to build an indoor air quality monitor and send the air quality information over LoRaWAN to the cloud/LoRaWAN server. It notably comes with a WisGate gateway and a Wisblock Node with an indoor enclosure. The kit contents and main specifications are as follows: RAK7246 WisGate Developer D0 with: Raspberry Pi Zero W board with Broadcom BCM2835 ARM11 processor @ 1GHz, 512MB RAM Storage – 16GB MicroSD card Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi and Bluetooth 4.0 via Cypress CYW43438 module found on RPi Zero W board RAK2246 Pi HAT LoRaWAN concentrator module with SX1308 baseband processor Frequency bands – RU864, IN865, EU868, US915, AU915, KR920, AS923 […]

DeNova Detect natural gas alarm works with Amazon Sidewalk network

Denova Detect Amazon Sidewalk natural gas alarm

New Cosmos’ DeNova Detect is a wireless natural gas alarm that works with the Amazon Sidewalk network designed for low-power, low-bandwidth IoT devices in and around the house, benefiting from free connectivity thanks to the installation base of Amazon devices such as the Echo Show acting as gateways. DeNova Detect does not require wiring to mains, and the device is expected to achieve an extended battery life of seven years, so customers can choose the optimal location for a gas alarm in their homes without needing to be close to an electrical outlet. There’s no need to have an additional gateway such as with LoRaWAN solutions as well as the customer owns one or more Sidewalk-compatible device.     Note that Amazon Sidewalk is currently deployed in the US only with global expansion planned for later. Amazon Sidewalk relies on Bluetooth LE inside the home, Sub-GHz GFSK on the sidewalk/around […]

Silicon Labs FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC targets Wi-SUN FAN networks

Silicon Labs FG25 Wi SUN microcontroller

Silicon Labs announced various new products at its annual Works With Developer Conference including the FG25 Arm Cortex-M33 SoC designed for sub-GHz Wi-SUN FAN networks for Smart Cities and applications such as smart metering, street lighting, electricity distribution automation, municipal infrastructure, and more. The microcontroller runs at up to 97.5 MHz, features 512KB RAM and up to 1920 KB flash, operates at up to 125°C, consumes as little as 2.6 μA in deep sleep mode, and can offer a range of up to 3 km when used in combination with the new EFF01x front-end module delivering up to +30 dBm output power. Silicon Labs FG25 (EFR32FG25) specifications: CPU core – Arm Cortex-M33 core @ 97.5 MHz with DSP instruction and floating-point unit for signal processing Memory – Up to 512 kB RAM data memory Storage – Up to 1920 kB flash program memory Radio Sub-GHz radio operation TX power up […]

Wi-SUN: An LPWAN standard for Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, large scale IoT deployments

Wi SUN network architecture

Wi-SUN is a standard (IEEE 802.15.4g) managed by the Wi-SUN Alliance and designed for Smart Cities, Smart Agriculture, and other large scale IoT deployments with a large number of devices thanks to the use of IPv6 mesh networking. The organization was founded in 2011 to “support the worldwide development of Wireless Communications Networks for Utilities, Smart Cities and IoT”, but due to the niche nature of target applications, it does not get that much press coverage and was only recently brought to my attention. Wi-SUN stands for “Wireless Smart Utility Networks”or “Wireless Smart Ubiquitous Networks”, and the standard aims to connect streetlights, cameras, weather stations, smart metering, utility transmission systems, and others to enable data-sharing between city services to improve their efficiency, save costs, and offer improves services to citizens. Wi-SUN FAN (Field Area Network) is the latest protocol managed by the Wi-SUN Alliance with over 95 million units shipped […]

ESP32 board supports 2.4Ghz LoRa with SX1280 RF transceiver

LilyGO LoRa V1.8 SX1280 antenna headers

We’ve seen plenty of ESP32 LoRa boards with the traditional 433 MHz, 868 MHz, or 915MHz frequencies, but I think LilyGO LoRa V1.8 (aka T3 V1.8) is the first ESP32 board that integrates a Semtech SX1280 transceiver for the 2.4GHz LoRa standard used for global coverage, notably maritime applications, and ranging. The ESP32 & SX1280 board also offers 26 pins for expansion, a microSD card for data storage, a 2-pin connector for batteries, a 0.96-inch OLED for information display, and comes with a 3D antenna and u.FL connector for WiFi and Bluetooth, and an SMA antenna for LoRa connectivity. LilyGO LoRa/T3 V1.8 specifications: SoC – Espressif ESP32 dual-core Xtensa LX6 processor with 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 4.2 Storage – 4MB SPI flash, microSD card slot Display – 0.96-inch OLED display with 128×64 resolution (SSD1306 I2C driver) Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 up to 150 Mbps +  Bluetooth 4.2 […]

Sparrow is a sensor-to-cloud LoRaWAN solution based on STM32WLE5 microcontroller

Sparrow developer kit

Blues Wireless Sparrow is a LoRaWAN solution designed to connect a group of low-cost, low-power device sensors for shared data backhaul to the cloud. It is comprised of STMicro STM32WLE5 LoRa-based sensors whose data is then routed through the company’s Notecard-powered WiFi or cellular gateway and ultimately a cloud app hosted on AWS, Microsoft Azure, or other IoT cloud platforms. The company claims the Notecard and Sparrow solutions ease the development of IoT networks in a way that was previously only available “to sophisticated engineering firms”, and now Blues Wireless supports cellular, WiFi, and LPWAN technologies. Let’s have a look at the “Sparrow Essentials” board specifications first: Wireless SoC – STMicro STM32WLE5+ Arm Cortex-M4F microcontroller @ 48MHz with 256KB Flash, 64KB of SRAM, Semtech SX126x LoRa transceiver I/Os Breadboard compatible 2.54mm headers with digital and analog I/O, I2C, UART, and SPI Qwiic Connector Debugging – JTAG (SWD capable) debug jack […]

Getting Started with LoRaWAN on SenseCAP K1100 sensor prototype kit (Part 1)

SenseCAP K1100 review LoRaWAN sensors

CNXSoft: This getting started guide/review of the SenseCAP K1100 sensor prototype kit is a translation of the original post on CNX Software Thai. The first part of this tutorial describes the kit and shows how to program it with Arduino to get sensor data to a LoRAWAN gateway and display it on Wio Terminal, before processing the data in a private LoRaWAN network using open-source tools such as Grafana. The second part – to be published later – will demonstrate the AI capability of the kit. In the digital era where IoT and big data are more prevalent, a large amount of data is required to be collected through sensors. To enable the digital transformation, SeeedStudio’s SenseCAP K1100 comes with all necessary sensors and equipment including the Wio Terminal, AI Vision Sensor, and a LoRaWAN module. With this plug-and-play platform, makers can easily create DIY sensors for data collection and […]

DEBIX Model A – A Raspberry Pi-inspired NXP i.MX 8M Plus SBC for AI applications

NXP i.MX 8M Raspberry Pi SBC

DEBIX Model A is a single board computer powered by an NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core Cortex-A53 processor with a 2.3 TOPS AI accelerator in a form factor that combines Raspberry Pi 4 and 3 Model B designs. The SBC comes with up to 6GB RAM, a microSD card slot, an optional eMMC flash of up to 128GB capacity, HDMI 2.0a, LVDS, and MIPI DSI display interfaces, a MIPI CSI camera interface, Gigabit Ethernet and WiFi 5 connectivity, plus a 40-pin GPIO expansion header. DEBIX Model A specifications: SoC – NXP i.MX 8M Plus quad-core Cortex-A53 @ up to 1.6 GHz (industrial) or 1.8 GHz (commercial), with Arm Cortex-M7 @ up to 800 MHz, Vivante GC7000UL 3D GPU, Vivante GC520L 2D GPU, 2.3 TOPS NPU System  Memory – 2GB LPDDR4 (4GB/6GB optional) Storage – Default: Micro SD card; optional 8GB, 16GB, 32GB, 64GB, or 128GB eMMC flash Video Output HDMI […]

Memfault IoT and embedded debugging platform