Oxalis 96Boards Enterprise Edition Board Targets Low Power IoT and Networking Applications

96Boards EE Standard Motherboard

Most 96Boards on the market follow 96Boards Consumer Edition (CE) specification, and while 96Board Enterprise Edition (EE) specification was first announced in 2015 we had yet to have a board available for purchase after previous failed attempts with AMD Opteron (Arm Cortex-A57) powered Cello board. But there’s finally a 96Board Enterprise Edition available today thanks to Systart Oxalis board powered by NXP LayerScape LS1202 Cortex-A53 processor with a packet accelerator, designed for low power IoT and networking applications, and following 96Boards EE “standard” form factor. Systart Oxalis key features and specifications: SoC – NXP Layerscape LS1012A single core Arm Cortex-A53 processor with hardware packet forwarding engine System Memory – Up to 3GB  RAM Storage – 64MB SPI Flash for bootloader and RCW, MicroSD Card slot, 1x mSATA connector Networking – 2x Gigabit Ethernet ports (RJ45) USB – 2x USB 3.0 ports Expansion 40-pin low speed (LS) expansion connector with +1.8V, […]

The Things Industries Announces $69 Indoor Multi-Channel LoRaWAN Gateway

Indoor Multi-channel LoRaWAN Gateway

If you ever see a cheap LoRaWAN gateway, chances are that it is a single channel gateway such as Dragino LoRa gateways that can be purchased for as low as $56. Those will work for your private network, but if others people try to use your gateway, some LoRa nodes will fail to connect. So what you really need is a multi-channel gateway for instance to connect it to The Things Networks. That would be $200 (and up), thank you very much. The IoT can only succeed on a large scale if costs are low enough, so Things Industries decided to design, and has now unveiled a low cost indoor multi-channel LoRaWAN gateway. Meet The Things Indoor Gateway. The Things Indoor Gateway specifications: SoC – Espressif System ESP8266 WiSoC Wireless Connectivity 802.11 b/g/n WiFi 4 via ESP8266 + PCB antenna LoRaWAN via Semtech 1308 chipset with Support for 868 MHz […]

Ivy5661 Bluetooth 5 + 802.11ac WiFi IoT Board Up for Pre-order for $35

Ivy5661 board

There are many WiFi and/or Bluetooth board designed for the Internet of Things thanks to ESP8266 / ESP32, and other solutions, but usually they all work in the 2.4 GHz frequency band which can be an issue in crowded environments. Last October, we covered ucRobotics Ivy5661  96Boards compliant IoT board that offers a dual core Arm Cortex-M4F MCU with 802.11ac WiFi 5 and Bluetooth 5 connectivity. It was still under development at the time, but today, I’ve noticed it was listed on Seeed Studio for $35 with shipping scheduled for the end of February. ucRobotics Ivy5661 board specifications: SoC – UniSoC UWP5661 dual core Arm Cortex-M4 microcontroller @ 416 MHz manufactured with 28nm process Storage – 32Mbit NOR flash Connectivity (built in SoC) Dual band 802.11ac 2×2 MIMO WiFi 5 up to 866MHz; supports repeater mode, RTT indoor positioning Bluetooth 5 with support for high power mode, BT mesh, and […]

Arduino IoT Cloud Public Beta Launched

Arduino IoT Cloud Thing Widget

It’s long been possible to get data from sensors connected to official or compatible Arduino board, upload it to some cloud services, and watch the results is a neat web interface. But until now, you had to rely on third party services such as ThingSpeak, Adafruit.io, or Thinger.io to name a few. Arduino has now announced their own Arduino IoT Cloud services is entering public beta. You’d normally need to modify the sketch by hand to connect an Arduino board to the cloud, but Arduino IoT Cloud can automatically generate a sketch when setting up a new project, and help you get started quickly in less than five minutes. The Arduino IoT Cloud supports HTTP REST API, MQTT, Command-Line Tools, Javascript, and Websockets, and devices are secured using X.509 certificate-based authentication. To get started, you’ll need an Arduino MKR board, and create an account or login to Arduino IoT Cloud. […]

MXCHIP EMW3060 WiFi IoT module sells for less than $2

MXCHIP EMW3060

Over the last few years, we’ve seen several Arm based WiFi IoT modules trying to compete with Tensilica based ESP8266 including Pine64 PADI IoT Stamp and Air602 WiFi IoT modules with similar functionalities and price (around $2) as the Espressif modules. I have not seen many projects with any of those Arm based wireless modules, likely because Espressif Systems software ecosystem is mature, and it’s hard to compete for new entrants. Nevertheless there’s a new Arm WiFi IoT module, not based on Cortex-M core, but instead, MXCHIP EMW3060 is equipped with an older ARM9 core, 256KB RAM, and 2MB flash, and sells for just $1.79 on Seeed Studio in single quantity. The price further drops to $1.55 per unit if you order 50 pieces or more. MXCHIP EMW3060 WiFi IoT module specifications: SoC ARM9 core clocked at 120 MHz System Memory – 256KB SRAM Storage – 2MB flash Connectivity – […]

AAEON AIOT-IP6801IP68 IoT Gateway Handles Rough Environments

IP68 IoT Gateway

There are plenty of IoT gateways to play with, but if your gateway needs to operate in rough environments, like outdoors or on a boat, you’d need to find one that is water and dust proof event for your environment. AAEON AIOT-IP6801 IoT gateway should meet most people requirements with IP68 ingress protection rating, an Intel Apollo Lake processor, up to 4GB memory, 32GB eMMC flash, built-in support for Ethernet, WiFi 802.11ac and Bluetooth 4.0, as well as optional support for LoRa, 3G/4G LTE, and IQRF connectivity. AAEON AIOT-IP6801 IP68 IoT gateway specifications: SoC (one or the other) Intel Atom E3940 quad-core processor clocked at 1.6 GHz / 1.8 GHz (Turbo) with a 12 EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 9.5W TDP Intel Celeron N3350 dual-core processor clocked at 1.1 GHz / 2.4 GHz (Turbo) with a 12 EU Intel HD Graphics 500; 6W TDP Memory – 2GB or 4GB LPDDR4 […]

Cellular Forecasts for 2024 – 1.5 Billion 5G Subscriptions, 4 Billion Cellular IoT Devices

Mobile subscription forecast 2024

5G has yet to really take off, as it’s only available in a few cities,  but a recent report publishes by Ericsson provides some forecasts for the future of 5G and cellular IoT connectivity, as well as interesting numbers of the current state of cellular networks. There are now 7.9 billion mobile subscriptions, more than humans, including 5.7 billion mobile broadband subscription, with Asia clearly dominating the field due to its much larger population. Asia also accounts for most of the recent growth in subscriptions, and interestingly people in Central and Eastern Europe (including Russia) especially appears to need more than one mobile subscription with 142% penetration, which means on average one person has 1.4 mobile subscriptions. There are more subscriptions than people in most of the continents/countries, but to a lesser extent, and India (87%) and Africa (82%) are the only exceptions. The chart above allows us to look […]

Mictrack MT825 is a Waterproof LTE Cat M1 & NB-IoT GPS Tracker

MT825 waterproof nb-iot gps tracker

We’ve previously covered Mictrack MT600 4G LTE GPS tracker with support for various GPS software such as the open source OpenGTS and Traccar programs, as well as Android & iOS mobile apps. Since then the company released MT550 model with NB-IoT and LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) connectivity, as well as an OBD-II model that are currently sold for respectively $99 and $69 on Aliexpress. More recently a waterproof LTE IoT module called Mictrack MT825, which we’ll look into more details in this post. Mictrack MT825 key features and specifications: Cellular Connectivity LTE Cat M1 (eMTC) LTE FDD: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B8/B12/B13/B18/B19/B20/B26/B28 LTE TDD: B39 LTE Cat NB1 (NB-IoT) – LTE FDD: B1/B2/B3/B4/B5/B8/B12/B13/B18/B19/B20/B26/B28 2G – GSM: 850/900/1800/1900Mhz SIM Card interface – Nano SIM Internal LTE CAT M1 & NB-IoT antenna Location U-blox MAX-7 GPS chip GPS sensitivity – -162dBm Channel – 56 Positioning Accuracy – 10m Cold Start – 30s. Warm start – 15s […]