Alfa Network's AHPI7292S HAT Brings Easy Wi-Fi HaLow Networking to the Raspberry Pi Family
Built around a Newracom SoC and a Qorvo radio front-end, this compact HAT offers long-range low-power Wi-Fi HaLow networking for the IoT.
Taiwanese wireless communications specialist Alfa Network has launched what it claims as the "world's first" Raspberry Pi HAT add-on to offer Wi-Fi HaLow connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT) — ideal, the company claims, for low-power long-range projects.
The Alfa AHPI7292S board, brought to our attention by Linux Gizmos, is built around a Newracom NRC7292 system-on-chip, which includes Wi-Fi HaLow connectivity to the IEEE 802.11ah Draft 8 standard — that is claimed to be, in the words of Kevin Walsh writing for the Wi-Fi Alliance, "the IoT wireless standard offering the best combination of range, throughput, density, low-power operation, and deployment costs — not perfect, certainly, but pretty close."
Running on the sub-gigahertz spectrum, between 750-928MHz, Wi-Fi HaLow is claimed to offer boosted range and better materials penetration than standard Wi-Fi, handles up to 80Mb/s throughput, offer support for 8,191 devices per access point, offers various power saving modes designed to boost the operational lifespan of battery-powered devices, and can be deployed alongside existing Wi-Fi networks without interference.
Alfa's implementation, meanwhile, is designed with Raspberry Pi projects in mind. Designed in the Hardware Attached on Top (HAT) form factor, the add-on is available in 847MHz, 866MHz, 915MHz, 922MHz, and 924MHz variants for Taiwan, the EU, the US, Korea, and Japan respectively, offers data rates between 150Kbps and 15Mbps, has a U.FL connector for an external antenna, and connects to the Raspberry Pi via its 40-pin general-purpose input/output (GPIO) header.
As well as the radio chip, the board includes a Qorvo RFFM6901 radio front-end module, offers communication over UART, SPI, or I2C buses, and has three status LEDs: A power LED, a transmission LED, and a reception LED. Software support, meanwhile, is provided via Newracom's official software development kit, last updated earlier this month to include code samples for SPI, I2C, and UART operation.
More information on the board is available on Alfa's website, while the US variant has begun appearing in the channel priced at around $69.99 per unit.
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