Conexio Stratus board is equipped with Nordic Semi nRF9160 System in Package (SiP) with LTE-M (eMTC) & NB-IoT cellular IoT connectivity as well as GPS support through a pair of u.FL connectors for antennas, together with 500MB of mobile data valid for ten years.
Designed for battery operation, the devkit comes with built-in battery charging, monitoring, and energy-harvesting circuitry, plus an accelerometer and a temperature and humidity sensor that makes it ideal for prototyping cellular IoT systems such as asset-tracking applications, environmental monitoring, and smart-meter monitoring, among others.
Conexio Stratus board
Conexio Stratus specifications:
- SiP – Nordic Semi nRF9160 system-in-package with Arm Cortex M33 MCU, 1 MB Flash, 256 kB RAM, cellular IoT modem, and GPS.
- Cellular Connectivity
- 3GPP LTE release 13 Category M1 and NB1 compliant
- 3GPP release 14 NB2 compliant
- RF Transceiver for global coverage supporting bands:
- Cat-M1: B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B8, B12, B13, B14, B17, B18, B19, B20, B25, B26, B28, B66
- Cat-NB1/NB2: B1, B2, B3, B4, B5, B8, B12, B13, B17, B18, B20, B25, B26, B28, B66
- Supports 4FF Nano SIM
- 1x u.FL antenna connector
- GNSS – GPS receiver (GPS L1 C/A supported), 1x u.FL connector for active antenna
- Sensors
- Sensirion SHT4x temperature and humidity sensor
- ST Microelectronics LIS2DH MEMS motion sensor (3-axis Femto accelerometer)
- USB – 1x Micro USB port for USB-to-Serial, DFU, application firmware programming and debugging, and LiPo battery charging
- Expansion – 32 through holes (2.54mm pitch) with 26 user-programmable GPIOs
- Debugger & Programmer – J-Link and CMSIS-DAP based programmers via 10-pin (1.27 mm pitch) pin connector
- Misc – Reset and user push buttons; ON/OFF slide switch; 1x user LED (green)
- Power Management
- Energy harvester IC – E-peas Semiconductors AEM10941 solar energy harvester
- Vin: 50 mV to 5 V
- Cold start: 3 μW @ 380 mV
- Power input: 3 μW to 550 mW
- Maximum power point tracking (MPPT) support
- Supports Li-ion and NiMH battery types
- Max solar panels: up to 7 solar cells simultaneously
- Power Supply
- 3.3 V Buck/Boost up to 0.9 A of current draw
- Operating range 2.8 to 5.5 V
- 2-pin JST connector for LiPo battery
- Charge rate set to 300 mA with yellow LED indication
- Maximum output current: 800 mA
- Current consumption in low-power-mode: < 5 μA
- Energy harvester IC – E-peas Semiconductors AEM10941 solar energy harvester
- Dimensions – 50.8 x 22.86 mm
- Weight – ~5 grams.
Software integration
The hardware itself is interesting, but we’ll already seen other similar nRF9160 boards with the likes of nRF9160 Feather, Icarus IoT, or Pebble Tracker, although AFAICR, Stratus is the first with an energy harvesting chip. But …….
