Cellular IoT on LattePanda 3 Delta

Cellular IoT is a way of connecting physical things (like sensors) to the internet by piggybacking on the same mobile networks as smartphones. Cellular IoT provides an alternative to low power, wide area networks (LPWAN) like LoRaWAN and Sigfox. Cellular IoT can benefit various industries by providing reliable, secure, and scalable connectivity for applications that require high data rates, low latencies, or mobility.

Examples of cellular IoT devices:

• Smartphones: These are the most common and familiar devices that use cellular networks to access the internet and communicate with other devices.
• Security devices: These include motion sensors, cameras, alarms, and locks that use cellular IoT to provide remote monitoring and control of homes or businesses.
• Smart home devices: These include appliances, thermostats, lighting, speakers, and TVs that use cellular IoT to offer convenience, comfort, and entertainment to users. Smart home devices can also be integrated with voice assistants or mobile apps for easy control.
• Sensors: These are devices that measure physical parameters such as temperature, humidity, pressure, vibration, or location and use cellular IoT to transmit the data to a cloud platform or a server. Sensors can be used for various applications such as weather monitoring, asset tracking, agriculture, health care, and environmental management.
• eBikes: These are bicycles that have electric motors and batteries that assist the riders pedaling. eBikes can use cellular IoT to provide features such as GPS navigation, theft protection, performance tracking, and remote diagnostics

All the smart systems like smartphones, security devices, smart home devices, eBikes have a common thing which is controller unit (SBC). These low power SBC means a single-board computer (SBC) that has a low power consumption and can run on batteries or solar panels. Low power SBCs are useful for applications that require portability, reliability, or energy efficiency.

LattePanda 3 Delta 864: This is a powerful SBC that has an Intel Core m3-8100y processor, 8 GB of RAM, 64 GB of eMMC storage, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, USB 3.0, HDMI, and Arduino compatibility. It only consumes 6W of power.

Cellular IoT providers unlock the barriers to connect the SBCs with the cloud network.

Blues Wireless is a company that provides a cellular IoT solution for connecting any thing to the cloud. Blues Wireless offers two main products: Notecard and Notehub.

• Notecard: This is a low-power device board that has a built-in cellular modem and secure data storage. Notecards can be embedded into any device and can send and receive data over a global cellular network.
• Notehub: This is a cloud platform that manages and routes data from Notecard devices to any cloud destination. Notehub also provides device monitoring, firmware updates, security features, and analytics tools.

In this tutorial we will see how we can add the cellular IoT on LattePanda 3 Delta by using Blues Wireless.

Things that you need:

Hardware:

• LTE-M Notecard Global
• Notecarrier A with LiPo, Solar, and Qwiic Connectors
• Lattepanda 3 Delta

Software:

• Arduino IDE
• Blues Notehub

Hardware Connection:

LattePanda 3 Delta has an inbuild Arduino core. So, we can directly connect our Notecarrier to the LattePanda 3 Delta. We are going to use the UART1 in the LattePanda 3 Delta.

Connect Notecarrier rxtx to the UART1 as shown below.

Software Programming& Data Retrieving:

To communicate with Notecard, we are going to use the Arduino Notecard library. make sure that you have added the Notecard library in your Arduino IDE.

Next open the example sketch from the Notecard library sketches.

Then just do these following changes in the sketch. Enable the Serial1 line.

Next, open the Notehub and create a new project with your details.

Then copy the project UID and paste that into the Arduino sketch

and finally upload the code LattePanda's Arduino Core. Once the code is uploaded navigate to the serial monitor and check the response.

Next, open the Blues Notehub then look for the incoming sensor data.

You can see the simulated sensors data in the Blues Notehub dashboard.

Wrap-Up:

Now you can connect your physical sensors to the LattePanda 3 Delta and send your data to the cloud without any interruption.