New recommended devkit

Aug 22, 2017 • Glenn

Until now, the Silicon Labs EZR32LG_WSTK6200 devkit was our recommend off the shelf kit to get started with Sub-IoT. We had good experiences using this board, however it has the disadvantage of being too expensive. People wanting to give Sub-IoT a try should be able to buy an off the shelf devkit for a reasonable price.

Recently we ported to a platform containing a Semtech sx1276 RF chip, to demo DASH7 and LoRa multi-modal communication using one MCU and RF chip. For yet another project we needed to support an STM32 MCU as well. Porting to those 2 chips allows us to support another platform, the STMicroelectronics B_L072Z_LRWAN1.B_L072Z_LRWAN1 The B_L072Z_LRWAN1 is marketed by STMicroelectronics as an STM32L0 discovery kit for LoRa, but it can be used for DASH7 as well. This devkit is a complete off the shelf solution, containing a programmer an STM32L0 MCU and sx1276 radio for a very reasonable price. More precisely, it contains a Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-091 module which embeds a STM32L072CZ MCU and a Semtech sx1276 RF chip together on a stand-alone module.

This module is interesting because it allows to easily integrate a DASH7 modem on a custom design. By adding this module to your board you can access the DASH7 modem running on this module from your main application MCU, for instance. For projects requiring multi-modal communication you can use DASH7, DASH7-over-LoRa, LoRaWAN or even SigFox (since the Murata module has recently been certified for SigFox).