Nordic Semiconductor, a global contributor in low power wireless connectivity solutions, has announced that its nRF9151 System-in-Package (SiP) module, a low-power integrated LTE-M/NB-IoT and DECT NR+ (NR+) modem solution with GNSS, now supports NR+ 915 MHz band operation. Support for the popular sub-GHz band complements the SiP module’s existing provision for 1.9 GHz global NR+ operation and opens up important new North American smart grid and utility metering applications, among others.
March 21, 2025
Posted by: Marion Webber
French embedded systems developer InVirtus Technologies has launched its ‘EosFlex’ and ‘EosFlexMini’ asset tracking devices for ultra-low power locationing using Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity. Powered by Nordic Semiconductor’s nRF52810 SoC, the compact tags measure just 19 by 31 mm, and are easily attachable to key resources using a self-adhesive backing. Equipped with a photovoltaic (PV) ‘solar’ panel, the tags harness energy from the environment to operate efficiently without requiring battery replacements, even in low-light conditions.
January 21, 2025
Posted by: Marion Webber
Capestone, a division of OptConnect, has announced it has acquired all activities of Next Era. With this step, Capestone furthers its growth by adding more than 250 channel partners and customers in France, Southern Europe, DACH and the Middle East that will benefit from Capestone’s expanded managed services and offerings. (more…)
December 11, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
DSR Corporation (DSR) has announced that its cross-platform Zigbee stack, ZBOSS, now supports Synaptics’ Veros Seamless Intelligent Connectivity portfolio, and that Synaptics has joined the ZBOSS Open Initiative (ZOI). ZOI, founded by DSR, fosters collaboration among companies to advance Zigbee PRO software for improved IoT interoperability and streamlined development. Synaptics’ participation enhances the initiative, bringing its expertise in wireless connectivity and commitment to delivering cutting-edge Zigbee solutions. This partnership strengthens ZOI’s mission to drive innovation across IoT sectors like smart homes, energy and industrial applications, with ZBOSS empowering developers to create advanced, universally compatible Zigbee-enabled devices.
December 9, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
The OnGo Alliance, an industry consortium dedicated to accelerating the adoption of LTE and 5G solutions in the Citizens Broadband Radio Service (CBRS) band, has announced strides in CBRS deployment across various industries. This progress was showcased at Mobile World Congress (MWC) Las Vegas 2024 and the OnGo Alliance Fall Member Meeting in Dallas, titled “OnGo Forward: CBRS, 5G, and Beyond.” (more…)
November 21, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
Nordic Semiconductor design partner HooRii Technology has launched a Matter 1.3 certified module that enables smart smoke and carbon monoxide (CO) detectors to trigger audible alarms and send near real time notifications to connected devices within a Matter ecosystem in the event of an emergency. The ‘HooRii Smoke & CO Alarm’ module is designed for use by IoT device OEMs, and incorporates Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC. The multiprotocol SoC is suitable for developing products for a Matter connected home using Thread connectivity for transport and Bluetooth LE connectivity for commissioning new devices to a network.
September 12, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
Silicon Labs has announced that its MG21 2.4 GHz wireless SoC had been selected by SONOFF for its new ZBMicro smart switch, SONOFF’s Micro Zigbee USB Smart Adaptor. ZBMicro is an addition to the realm of smart home technology. From its role as a smart switch for USB devices to its capabilities as a Zigbee router and support for fast charging, the ZBMicro delivers an unparalleled user experience that elevates the connectivity and convenience of modern smart homes. (more…)
August 2, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
Joint Chinese is launching its latest turnkey smart ring design based on Nordic’s nRF52840 SoC. The Bluetooth LE SoC provides connectivity and supervises the health and wellness sensor algorithms. The out-of-the-box solution comes with a breadth of monitoring options, including V02 max, blood oxygen saturation (SpO2), blood glucose estimation, temperature, heart rate and heart rate variability (HRV), as well as sleep and activity data.
“The J-Style JCRing is the future of personal health measurement and has been developed for users who need to continuously monitor their body data, as well as people concerned about their personal health and fitness,” said Yan Hongwu, the general manager at Joint Chinese Limited. “We have worked with Nordic for many years now because the company has a long-standing reputation in health applications and its ultra low power wireless SoCs are ideally suited to resource constrained applications such as smart rings.”
The J-Style JCRing comes in a miniaturised 8 mm wide and 2.9 mm thick form factor, in a range of U.S. standard ring sizes. Despite its small size, the device offers advanced operation and superior data security, thanks to the Nordic SoC’s rich set of features. The nRF52840 SoC is available in a wafer level chip scale package (WLCSP) to support both cost- and space-constrained wireless designs, while its 64 MHz, Arm Cortex M4 processor with floating point unit (FPU) provides ample computational overhead to supervise the sensors and run the sensor algorithms. The Arm CryptoCell-310 cryptographic accelerator ensures personal data remains secure on the device and during transmission, essential in sensitive health applications.
In typical operation, the J-Style JCRing’s 14.5-21.5 mAh Li-Po battery achieves a life of up to 10 days between recharge, or up to 30 days in standby mode, depending on which features have been activated and the frequency of ring use. This extended battery life is in part thanks to the ultra low power characteristics of the Nordic SoC. The nRF52840 has been engineered to minimise power consumption with features such as the 2.4 GHz radio’s 5.5-mA peak RX/TX currents and a fully automatic power management system that significantly reduces power consumption.
Thanks to the performance of JCRing, J-Style now is one of the leaders in Smart Ring and also aiming to get the smart ring Medical certificate in Q1 2025
The nRF52840 SoC’s robust and stable Bluetooth LE wireless connectivity enables the user to view and analyse their health data via the ‘JCRing’ app on their smartphone. The iOS and Android app also enables users to set personalised goals and receive health advice, while female users can manage and track their menstrual cycle.
The endurance of the battery and Bluetooth range is better than similar products on the market because of Nordic’s leadership in ultra low power wireless connectivity. The nRF52840 SoC’s powerful processor and large memory capacity together ensure the complex sensor algorithms can be carried out rapidly and accurately, while the high radio sensitivity guarantees a stable Bluetooth connection.
“Thanks to the great performance of JCRing, J-Style now is one of the top leaders in Smart Ring and also aiming to get the smart ring Medical certificate in Q1 2025.” said Yan Hongwu.
“By providing comprehensive technical information and reference designs, Nordic also simplifies the development process. An excellent team of application engineers provides quick response and professional support.”
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May 28, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
Aetheros has announced that it has added GSMA remote SIM provisioning (RSP) support to its flagship software product AetherOS (AOS). Utilities customers can now provision their smart grid eSIMs for the fast, reliable and secure AT&T nationwide network.
In North America, AetherOS is available on the Aclara I-210+c and kV2c Gen 5 smart meters. Utilities need secure, reliable and resilient wireless connectivity to deliver new services to customers and connect to their customers’ smart meters. With remote SIM provisioning, utility companies have the power of choice and flexibility to deploy AMI 2.0 on public, private or hybrid networks.
“Working with AT&T, we have developed a secure and scalable eSIM solution for utility companies that want to build out private 4G/5G LTE networks,” said Ray Bell, the founder and CEO of Aetheros. “By adding eSIM support to AOS, these utilities now have a zero-cost option for migrating their smart meters between their private and public LTE networks.”
AetherOS is an open standards-based network operating system and edge computing platform based on Linux. At the core of AOS is its oneM2M compliant IoT Service Layer software with integrated OMA SpecWorks compliant LightweightM2M support, that together provide devices and applications with secure, reliable, and scalable device, application, and network management services. This rich set of services provided by the AOS open standards based IoT Service Layer enables utilities to securely and deploy and manage their intelligent edge applications on market leading residential, commercial and industrial smart meters.
“AT&T is committed to assisting utilities that are using advanced 4G/5G cellular networking in their next-generation smart metering infrastructure network buildouts,” said David Garver, a Area vice president, AT&T Connected Solutions. “AT&T has a long history of working with utilities customers providing fast, reliable and secure telecommunications services. By working with Aetheros to deliver eSIM support for smart meters, AT&T is empowering utilities to deploy LTE smart meters on the AT&T nationwide network and their private networks.”
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February 27, 2024
Posted by: Magda Dabrowska
EchoStar Mobile Limited, an EchoStar company, announced that Dryad Networks has made an initial purchase of 3,000 EM2050 LoRaWAN modules and related connectivity services. The modules, powered by Semtech‘s ultra-low power LR1120 device, will provide embedded LoRaWAN satellite IoT capabilities for the Dryad Silvanet gateways.
Dryad’s Silvanet Suite of end-to-end wildfire detection technology is already deployed in 25 countries by a number of public and private sector organisations.
Based in Germany, Dryad provides ultra-early detection of wildfires as well as health and growth-monitoring of forests through the Silvanet solution – solar-powered gas sensors deployed in a large-scale LoRaWAN mesh network. Dryad aims to reduce unwanted wildfires, which cause up to 20% of global CO2 emissions and have a devastating impact on biodiversity. By 2030, Dryad aims to prevent 3.9 million hectares of forest from burning, preventing 1.7 billion tons of CO2 emissions.
“Each year, wildfires are responsible for 20% of global CO2 emissions and cause $140 billion of financial damages,” Carsten Brinkschulte, a CEO and co-founder of Dryad Networks, said in a media statement. “Dryad Networks is committed to protecting public and private forests with fire detection and monitoring solutions and the EM2050 module from EchoStar Mobile gives us the features we need to enable large-scale deployments in areas with poor or non-existent terrestrial network coverage.”
Brinkschulte added that the EM2050 module made sense because of its compliance to LoRaWAN standards, the world’s largest IoT ecosystem. “The EM2050’s latest features, such as Semtech’s Long Range – Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) technology coupled with EchoStar Mobile’s powerful satellite IoT communications infrastructure will provide excellent support for Dryad’s Silvanet wireless distributed architecture network.”
Prior to working with EchoStar Mobile, Dryad relied primarily on terrestrial connectivity with limited support for satellite communications. Integrating the real-time communications and dual mode connectivity of the EM2050 module into the upcoming third generation of Sylvanet gateways will make it possible for Dryad to make full-featured use of satellite links, including support for bi-directional communications, device configuration and Firmware Update Over The Air (FUOTA), enabling deployments independently of terrestrial network coverage.
“We are thrilled to power the Silvanet product line with the EM2050 LoRaWAN compatible module,” said Telemaco Melia, a vice president and general manager of EchoStar Mobile. “Satellite connectivity is necessary to assure reliable and cost-effective 100% coverage. And the EM2050 module supports multicast and FUOTA, optimising operations and keeping the Silvanet devices up to date.”
“We believe that satellite IoT holds immense potential in delivering significant benefits across various applications, in particular, those targeting environmental protection like Dryad’s Silvanet Suite,” said Carlo Tinella, senior product marketing manager at Semtech. “By providing affordable wireless connectivity in remote areas beyond the reach of terrestrial networks, it is possible to expand the digitalisation process into vast natural assets, contributing to our planet’s sustainable development goals.”
Tinella added that Semtech is “enthusiastic about the outcome of this collaboration with EchoStar Mobile and believe the enablement of satellite technology for IoT leveraging LoRa and LR-FHSS is just the beginning of a groundbreaking and transformative journey.”
February 23, 2024
Posted by: Anna Ribeiro