Blues Accelerates Developing Globally Connected IIoT Devices with Their Latest Hardware Kits

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) consists of physical devices with sensors and actuators communicating with a cloud application. The wireless link between the two can consume significant development time, especially if the goal is to use multiple technologies. Blues recently launched a new series of products that harmonizes devices and cloud applications across Wi-Fi, cellular, and LoRa wireless connections. To help me understand how their unique solution works, they sent a Getting Started Kit. Here is my experience with Blues Wireless, Notecards, and Notehub.

Blues, known initially as Blues Wireless, provides connectivity solutions for IIoT devices. Their products include hardware development tools, wireless cards, and a robust cloud interface platform. The essential products to know are Notecards and Notehub.

Notecard

A Notecard is a system on module (SoM) that combines a microcontroller and at least one radio. There are Notecards with Cellular (LTE Cat-1, Cat-M, NB-IoT), Wi-Fi (2.4 GHz), Cell+WiFi, and LoRa. All Notecards have an M.2 connector. Their sizes are similar, with differences in height or thickness.

Note: Blues also offers "chips" editions of their cards. These are high-volume (minimum of 500 pieces) customized solutions.

Their onboard microcontroller manages the wireless connection and communicates via UART (serial) or I2C with the application processor. That communication does not use cryptic AT-style commands. Instead, it uses a JSON structure to configure the wireless parameters and to send data to the cloud.

Using a modern way to interact with a wireless module means you can easily integrate Notecard into almost any development environment. The Blues Dev portal provides examples for C/C++ in VSCode with PlatformIO and the Arduino IDE. You can also use high-level languages like Python or CircuitPython. Easy interaction continues beyond there. Since the hardware interfaces are UART or I2C, you can use almost any microcontroller with the Notecard. However, Blues does offer a microcontroller board called Swan.

Swan and Notecarriers

Swan is an STM32L4R5-based board in an Adafruit Feather-compatible form factor. The microcontroller is an Arm Cortex-M4 with 640 kilobytes of RAM, 2 megabytes of flash, and 55 GPIO pins! The GPIOs are accessible via 2.54 mm header pins and castellated edges. The castellated edges mean you can solder Swan directly onto a PCB, which reduces the development effort to integrate the microcontroller in your IIoT device. It also has connectors for a LiPo battery, Qwiic / STEMMA QT, and an ST-LINKV3 debug header.

You can use Swan or other Feather-compatible boards with a Notecarrier-F during development. (The F is for feather!) They help break out the signals, power, and data from the Notecard to connect them to the microcontroller easily. There is a raw input voltage, a battery socket, and an option for solar. It also provides a few more Qwiic connectors are as well.

On the back of the Notecarrier, you can find a SIM socket. However, this socket is optional to get up and running with the cellular Notecards. The Notecard has an onboard SIM to work out of the box (or ESD bag, in this case!)

Notehub.io

Blues calls Notecards cloud data pumps because they are pre-configured to send or pump data directly to their Notehub service.

Notehub makes setting up a hardware fleet and managing multiple projects efficiently. Each project has a unique ID that connects one or more Notecards to it. Once you make this connection, the Notecard is ready to pump data into Notehub.

You can use routes to get data back out. Numerous services like AWS, Azure, GCP, and Snowflake, along with generic routes like webhooks, are available. Additionally, there are transformations built into Notehub's routing tools to manipulate the native JSON data into something more suitable for your application.

Compared to setting up a self-hosted MQTT broker or webserver to handle REST calls from an IIoT device, using Notehub is a breeze. The magic is the nearly automatic connection between the Notecard and Notehub.

An exciting and welcomed aspect of the Blues pricing model is you do not pay when sending data to Notehub. However, Notehub does charge you consumption credits when data leaves it. (And for some API calls.) When connected to a Notecard, an account starts each month with 5,000 consumption credits. You buy additional credits via replenishment at a fraction of one cent, which varies based on how many you buy upfront.

Overall, this pricing model is a fair way to help you manage costs during development as well as when scaling up an application. As a reminder, Blues does not have a subscription model. For example, the cellular devices come with 500 megabytes of data and can be re-filled through Blues. For an IIoT device sending occasional sensor updates, 500 megabytes might last years!

Getting started with the Getting Started Kit

I received a Global Getting Started Kit. The package contains a Notecarrier-F, Swan, Cell+WiFi Notecard, and a Molex antenna designed for LTE and GPS. Blues says it works with 2.4GHz Wi-Fi as well. I did not do any specific testing, but it connected to my wireless routers fine.

Going through the process of setting up the hardware is straightforward. Notecards ship with a QR code that provides identifying information. Each package has a code and link to the Blues QuickStart guides.

There are text and video guides available. Blues recommends using a Chromium-based browser. That way, you can use the serial terminal in-browser while trying out the commands using the provided JSON structures. For example, if you have a Wi-Fi-only Notecard, you can copy/paste the example JSON to configure the SSID and Password.

The guides are simple to follow. After setting up a project in Notehub, they walk you through programming Swan as an example IoT device. The directions assume you have limited experience with programming microcontrollers. For example, they go step-by-step, setting up PlatformIO in VSCode. The first example is blink, of course, and then you send data to Notehub from a pseudo-sensor. The last quickstart lesson is setting a route from Notehub to a webhook.

In all, subtracting the time it took for PlatformIO to (one-time) install pre-requisites, I went from sending JSON strings via serial to viewing temperature information via webhooks in tens of minutes. (I lost track of time because I was having fun testing various API calls via the JSON+serial interface.)

One point I almost missed during my testing was that I had no idea whether the Notecard used Wi-Fi or Cellular to communicate! Initially, I thought I had to connect it to my IoT wireless router. So, it had the choice of Wi-Fi or Cellular. Only when I looked in the metadata in Notehub could I tell which radio it used.

To be clear, you have complete control to override this dynamic behavior. You can force either connection or both. But, dynamically failing over demonstrates the ease of using the Notecard. The focus of your IIoT device can be collecting the data while Notecard handles getting it to Notehub/cloud.

Multiple location options

Notecards provide multiple methods for determining the device's location. The modules with cellular radios also have a GPS/GNSS radio. Cellular modules can also approximate location by the tower. And Wi-Fi radios can perform Wi-Fi triangulation via Notehub. (Currently, those API hits are complementary.)

Like most features in the Notecard, you have complete control over which methods determine location or let the Notecard manage the process automatically.

While GPS provides more accurate positioning data, it is relatively slow and very power-hungry. Using Wi-Fi triangulation might be a more efficient method, depending on the density of Wi-Fi access points.

I found the Wi-Fi triangulation to be as accurate as GPS when used indoors. (I did not get a chance to compare the two outside.) However, I conducted my tests in a very dense urban area, so I am not surprised by the accuracy.

Also, Notecards contain a low-power accelerometer. By default, they only update their position when the accelerometer detects movement. This feature helps with saving battery power.

Upcoming LoRa option

Blues does not sell the LoRa Notecard yet, but they say it will be available soon. LoRa is a low-power, low-range radio technology. The LoRa Notecards send data via The Things Network (TTN), which uses LoRaWAN, a wide-area network protocol that runs on top of LoRa. Typically, there is a monthly charge to use this network beyond small-scale testing. However, Blues has incorporated those charges into the price of the LoRa Notecard.

Today, TTN/LoRaWAN coverage varies by region. There is relatively robust coverage in Europe. In North America, it could be better. (This map provides coverage information.) In the future, Blues says they will sell a LoraWAN gateway module. They intend for these devices to provide coverage in locations like warehouses.

Summary

These are well-designed and quality manufactured devices. Quite frankly, it is hard to believe the development kits are only in the one hundred dollar range, especially considering you can get started with cellular without additional fees!

The hardware itself is thought-out, feature-rich, and documented well. The documentation extends to the software APIs. Interfacing with Notecards via JSON is a clever use model and a welcome change to years of fighting cryptic AT-style commands.

With well-written APIs, it is effortless to change from Wi-Fi to cellular to LoRa (when available) with minimal code changes and (almost) no usage cost difference. Additionally, Notehub provides a scalable platform for rapidly developing an IIoT application with an affordable deployment path.

Bottom line, if you are developing an IoT device, I strongly encourage you to pick up a Blues Starter Kit and spend a little bit of time working with it. Like me, you will better understand how Blues harmonizes the wireless connection between collecting physical data and the cloud so you can focus on building intelligent, data-driven products.

Head over to the shop to pick up a Blues Global Starter Kit, one that is region-specific, Notecards, or other development hardware.