Iridium Promises an Easy Path to Satellite IoT with Its Arduino-Compatible Certus 9704 Developer Kit
Breakout board makes its satellite communication module accessible to all, while Arduino examples lower the barrier to entry.
Satellite communications specialist Iridium has announced a quick-start development kit for its Certus 9704 Iridium Messaging Transport (IMT) module — teaming up with engineering firm Device Solutions Inc. to deliver a compact board boasting support in the Arduino IDE.
"The Iridium Certus 9704 Developer Kit is a highly efficient end-to-end evaluation tool for the Iridium Certus 9704 module and its companion service, Iridium Messaging Transport (IMT)," the company says of its latest ground-side launch. "Simple yet versatile, the kit bundles hardware, software, and connectivity components to create a streamlined discovery experience that works for tech-savvy and non-technical users alike. Whether you’re just getting to know the Iridium network or looking for new development opportunities as a seasoned Iridium partner, the Developer Kit allows you to test Iridium IoT [Internet of Things] capabilities quickly, accurately, and independently."
The kit, brought to our attention by Arduino and designed in partnership with Device Solutions, is built around Iridium's Certus 9704 Module, a surface-mount device designed for connecting devices to the Iridium Messaging Transport service. This provides the ability to carry messages up to 100kB in size over Iridium's globe-spanning satellite constellations, from anywhere in the world — reaching areas where Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and even long-range systems like LoRa can't cover. Like the popular MQTT, IMT is based on a publish-subscribe model with "Topics" to categorize message types.
The kit takes a pre-provisioned module and installs it onto a compact "Launch Pad" development board alongside a Microchip ATSAMD21J18A microcontroller, with a single Arm Cortex-M0+ core running at up to 48MHz, 32kB of static RAM (SRAM), and 256kB of program flash. The board also includes a u-blox MAX-M10S Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receiver and pin headers for I2C, SPI, and UART buses plus 22 general-purpose input/output (GPIO) pins, eight of which can act as analog inputs, one of which is also an analog output, and 12 of which support pulse-width modulation (PWM). The board also includes a user-addressable push-button switch, a battery management chip for the bundled 3Ah lithium-ion battery, and a piezoelectric buzzer.
A major feature of the development kit is its promise of Arduino compatibility: Iridium has published a board definition package that adds support for the Certus 9074 into the Arduino IDE, plus a library that includes a transceiver interface and example sketches demonstrating its use. Source code for this is published on GitLab under the permissive MIT license.
More information on the kit, which is now available to order at $499 with a limit of one per customer and ongoing fees required for IMT access, is available on the Iridium website.