“What if you could connect devices to a wireless network anywhere?” – this is the question posed by Particle Founder and CEO Zach Supalla in teasing new solutions revealed at today’s Particle Spectra Showcase. Between Wi-FI and LTE and LoRaWAN and NB-IoT and … all the rest, surely it’s possible to obtain connectivity pretty much everywhere via…something, right? But which one do you pick for your application? Particle is making that decision moot with their new M-Series line of multi-radio devices.
The M-series features up to four wireless solutions on a single board, including good old Wi-Fi, near-ubiquitous cellular, low-power/long-range LoRaWAN, and (drumroll) satellite! Using a new IoT-optimized protocol on non-terrestrial networks (NTN), what used to be not only a cost-prohibitive but also power-budget-prohibitive connectivity choice is finally within reach. And with up to four diverse radios on board, critical data can fail over from one to the next until it finds its way to the cloud from however far-afield.
Of greatest interest to makers is the Muon dev board, which combines the M-series SoM with a carrier, and features a Qwiic/STEMMA QT connector and headers for easy expansion. While the headers do not use a known standard like Arduino shields or Adafruit Feathers, Particle plans on creating “Expansion Cards” for the new form factor. USB-C PD and a screw block are available to provide power, as well as a 3-pin JST, plus built-in LiPo charging. The Muon can also be combined with Particle’s Monitor One customizable gateway.
The M-SoM multi-radio system-on-module is also available without a carrier in various configurations, with the same M.2 form factor as prior Particle SoMs. Equipped with a 200MHz Arm Cortex-M3, 16MB of Flash, and 4.5MB of RAM, the devices have plenty of power for Edge ML and other tasks before shipping off data via myriad networks. Onboard GNSS, combined with cell tower triangulation and Wi-Fi geolocation mean that location tracking is also built-in.
Muon is available for preorder at https://www.particle.io/ today, with Wi-Fi/cellular/LoRaWAN Muons shipping next quarter, and the satellite-enhanced version releasing in Q3.
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