IoT dev kit for prototyping low-power device clusters
Embedded cellular IoT specialist Blues Wireless has announced the general availability of an efficient and economical solution to the last mile problem of internet-connecting a group of low-cost, low-power device sensors for shared data backhaul to the cloud. The Sparrow low-cost embeddable STM32WLE5-based microcontroller board is designed to accelerate the development and deployment of battery-powered IoT solutions, utilizing its onboard LoRa Radio to create a hub-and-spoke network topology.
Sensors are organized into clusters, and LoRa-based sensor data is routed through the company’s inexpensive Notecard-powered cellular gateways. The Notecard’s unique developer experience, says the company, was designed to simplify cellular, democratizing a capability formerly only available to sophisticated engineering firms, and providing a simple developer experience that enables unprecedented speed from concept-to-deployment.
The Sparrow initiative extends this developer experience to a variety of new wireless scenarios. Beyond simplifying cellular, the full range of Notecard offerings now simplifies wireless across cellular, Wi-Fi and LPWAN technologies.
“When building wireless IoT solutions, developers sometimes run into scenarios that require lower-cost connectivity than they can achieve with a cellular or Wi-Fi module in every device,” says Brandon Satrom, VP of Experience Engineering at Blues Wireless. “Sparrow provides low-cost LoRa-based sensors for these use cases and leverages the Notecard for cloud backhaul, to simplify and accelerate the process of building device cluster-based applications.”
This is particularly evident in several fixed-location device cluster scenarios, such as occupancy sensing or facilities management solutions using smoke sensors. Sparrow offerings present an opportunity for dramatic per-sensor cost savings – with LoRa support as low as $1 per sensor, says the company.
The developer kit provides a complete solution, with reference hardware, example firmware, and an easy-to-deploy web application. The Sparrow developer kit is available now.
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