Tindie Weblog | Straightforward LTE-CAT1 IoT Growth Board

The event of 4G-LTE-CAT1 has been a boon to IoT initiatives of all sizes and styles. Carriers supply extraordinarily cheap plans with information and protocols geared toward sending information on an asynchronous foundation. This matches effectively with information assortment by way of MQTT, for instance. This 4G-LTE-CAT1 A7670 Growth Board is a small, easy-to-use CAT1 mobile modem. The aforementioned A7670 is kind of a drop-in alternative for the older SIM8xx/SIM9xx collection modules that are restricted to 2G — which is being discontinued in lots of areas.

Accepting enter voltages from 9V-42V on the DC jack provides a variety of flexibility in selecting your energy supply. A pre-mounted U.FL antenna connector is on the market, with pads for mounting an SMA connector when you favor. The breakout connectors on both aspect of the board have connections to the UART & SPI pins on the module, in addition to connections to the microphone and speaker ports. Although CAT1 is geared toward information, it’s potential to additionally make audio calls which opens the door to attention-grabbing concepts like a handheld fax machine or DIY cellphone.

There are hyperlinks to the SDK and different documentation for speaking with the module. It may be managed totally over UART with an AT command set, and the documentation supplied by SimCom appears high-quality and straightforward to observe. Be sure you order the proper module kind — the completely different letter suffixes denote completely different frequency bands for various components of the world! For a fast take a look at the board, try the video beneath and make sure to try the product web page.