As seen in a previous post, working with nRF52 and Eclipse is not the easiest challenge !
This post will detail how to create a template project for a BLE project using a softdevice working on the PCA10040 board and using my ble library.
This can be apply to most of ble starting project with nRF52. I assume you configured Eclipse IDE as described in this post. As a pre-requisite you also need git. The tutorial works with SDK 12.3
nRF52382 is a BLE micro-controler based on a 32b Arm M4 core operating at 64MHz. It includes 512kb of flash memory and 64kb of RAM with a price about 2,80$.
It supports BLE (Bluetooth Smart) and ANT RF protocol. It also includes a NFC-A tag. NFC can wake up device and allow easy bluetooth pairing.
Device allows Over-the-Air Firmware Upgrade. It also have different SoftDevice (protocol stacks) with BLE or ANT8 or both.
By including internal Oscillators, power supply elements and Rf elements, this chip is a low cost solution for building IoT.
nRF52832 will be available Q1 2016 but development kit preview are available. (note – this post has been kept as a draft for a too long time !! )
Now, let’s read the next part for how to quick start with the development kit.
I’m a regular user of different PCB services form my electronic design. Since 4 year now I’m mostly working with Eurocircuit but recently I tested different low cost solutions : seeed studio, jlcpcb and OSH Park. This is now an opportunity to compare these different solutions.
New episode of my LPWAn post series, this time, about the network architecture and the role of the network kernel.
The network architecture is different than a classical IP communication from client to server: the LPWAn architecture is based on a kernel network allowing the protocol transformation from the Sigfox / LoRaWan world to the IP-Internet world.
In the LPWAn protocol the addressing is limited to one device address only to reduce the frame size and as a consequence all the frame have to be captured by a central system: the network kernel. It will route the message correctly to the end user application based on device association made on registration.
This post is related to a french video (as usual) and detailed in the following part of this post.
TD1208/TD1508
TD1508 is the FCC version of the TD1208, they are pin to pin compatible and based on the same SDK so converting an object working on a TD1208 sounds easy. Practically speaking there are some preparing steps because of some tiny bugs to solve.
Let see how to port a Telecom Design existing firmware for TD1208 to TD1508 (from ETSI to FCC).
The Things Network (TTN) is a global LoRaWan public network kernel based on crowd-source infrastructure. This initiative sounds really interesting in my point of view because it breaks one of the main LoRaWan issues : the country based operators organization.
Related to this good point, the negative point is the current area covered by a such network limited to the contributor localization, generally in the main cities.
That said, I’m convinced : when you want to create a private LoRaWan network you have to manage a network kernel managing gateways, device authorizations… You can do it yourself, you can pay someone to do it for you or, eventually, you can lever TTN for this use. As a counterpart you will extend the network and offer this benefit to any around. That way it makes sense and gives large opportunities to the networks and it’s private users.
Long introduction for a technical topic … How to join this network once you have a Kerlink LoRa Iot station available ? Continue reading
Sigfox has announced end of last week the opening of the device Geo-location service. This solution allows to get the location of a device based on its radio signal.
Different announced has been made in this domain by Sigfox and its competitors LoRaWan. The technics in place are not the same and the Sigfox solution is based on BigData.
From the beginning Sigfox was returning a device location based on the signal measured by the different base-stations. This location was previously rounded to the nearest lat/lng degree. This information has a precision of 100km x 150km basically. Even if it was not possible to locate a device precisely, i was interesting to know in what country corner it was located.
With the service launched in February 2017 Sigfox is moving to a more precise location based on radio signal, according to different discussions I had the precision goes from a couple of meters to some kilometers depending on situation, data already gathered at this position, number of antennas …
The downlink process is the way a sensor can receive data from the network. This process is really useful if you need the device to execute an action or if you want to change the sensor behavior.
This post is as some other of my LpWan series a video post in French completed by this text post in english.