sigfox hack board
I assume you know a little bit who I am and what I’m doing, I’m not the one to by > 100€ to buy a one shot development board kit to test & hack a device like the Telecom Design chip. So basically I built my own with the objective to work with multiple configuration.
My “cahier des charges” was to make a board able to be installed as a dauther board on a raspberry PI, able to support an arduino, able to run autonomously and being able to own a TD1204 as a TD1208.
It was a huge work to route it and I must recognize that it do not have all the GPIO connected as I expected but it exists, it works and it help me to build my first SigFox prototypes with success.
So, now, I propose to distribute this board to those of you looking for a such swiss knife.
The board can be use in multiple environments :
If you connect it to a raspberry PI, you will use the green connector and get access to the telecom design chip through the UART. The Raspberry will provide the 3.3V supply and 3 of the TD GPIO will be accessible from the RPI also.
If you connect an Arduino nano on the board, you will also communicate with the TD chips using the UART and get access to 2-4 GPIOs. In this configuration, the power supply is provided by the board. It can be done from a usb cable or from batteries.
The TD1204/TD1208 area allowing you to plpug one of these components.
The wrapping zone on the bottom of the photo allow you to add some extra components
The connector area on the to gives you an access to all of the TD GPIO’s
The antenna connector can be on the top or on the front depending on the casing.
Arduino use case
SigFox Hack Board with an Arduino
With an arduino on it, the board look like this, here with a TD1204
Raspberry PI use case
Sigfox hack Board mounted on a Raspberry PI
Mounted on a Raspberry PI board – see this post for details
Stand alone use case
Standalone usage of the sigfox hack board
Here is an example of the board configured for a standalone usage where the firmware has been modified for a custom usage.
You can see the bottom part with all the components:
- An usb connector provides power supply but also a serial communication with a PC for firmware flashing and also debugging
- A protected power supply circuit to get 3.3V from USB with fuse and TVS protection including an automatic switching system on battery and an area for a power push up circuit generating 3.3V from battery. (this one can be bypassed)
- On the top the TD1208 connector with most of the GPIO accessible
A FDTI connector can also be soldered for firmware programming instead of a FDTI chip
Status of this post
I’ll document all of this depend of your usage and questions, so this will be a “on construction” page for a while.
This board is not validated by SigFox, it means you can’t use it in a final design or you will have to validate it.
So, if you are looking for a such board, leave me a comment with you email address and I’ll contact you to discuss about it. I can produce it, sell it, do a lot of stuff with it, depend of the time I have and depend of you and your project.
It may be possible to sell it in a more industrial way later, but today i’m too busy to study this.
Bonjour,
Nous sommes une équipe de 4 étudiants-ingénieurs, et nous envisageons l’utilisation de la technologie Sigfox. Nous avons vu sur votre blog que vous utilisez des puces de Telecom Design, pouvez-vous nous renseigner à ce sujet puisque nous n’avons pas trouvé un ordre de prix et l’endroit où en acheter ?
Merci d’avance
To obtain these chips & price, the best way is to ask Avnet-memec : the French distributor. What component are you looking to ? TD1204 ? TD1208 ?
We are currently looking for the TD1208 model.
We will contact Avnet-memec, thank you for your answer.
Hello,
I have a TD1208 module and a RPi and I am trying to work with them but I have some issues.
Can you help me?
Thank you!!!!
Tell me what kind of issue you have.
I have some sensors that send their data to RPi.
In RPi, I have installed some servers in order to receive and manage the data. I forward these data (they are in JSON format) via http to Open.Sen.Se (cloud applications).
Now, I want to send these data to Open.Sen.Se via Sigfox technology.
I have a TD1208. How can I send these dava via Sigfox? I think that first I have to convert the value I want (e.g. temperature from one device/sensor) to hexadecimal, send it some how, to sigfox back-end and then I have to create a callback, to receive this value to Open.Sen.Se application.
I do not know open.sen.se service so my answer will not be complete. I see three ways :
– if open.sen.se is able to manipulate data given through get parameter you can directly point your callback to this service.
– if open.sen.se is able to search data in an email you can eventually use that way as callback can be an email
– if not, you will need to use an intermediate website to transform you sigfox raw data to a open.sen.se compatible format
I manage to send the value that I want via sigfox to Thingspeak (it`s another platform). But the value is in hexadecimal. Do you know any website which I can use in order to convert the hexadecimal to ASCII and then send them to to Thingspeak?
Or can I make the transform from hexadecimal to ASCII in callback url? (stupid question but I dont know…)
In fact the data are send in ASCII where each of the characters are hex coded values representing a quartet. I don’t know if any web service propose a conversion you could use. By-the-way you can look to my other post where you will find the 10 lines of PHP you need to interpret this value.
Is schematic of your board is available ?
I’m actually building a Hat compatible card it should be delivered soon. I can provide PCB for good price. contact me by email.
Hi, I would be interested in ordering one or two of these PCB. Do you have any available ?
Yes sure ! I just sent you an email