Pycno’s Pulse Modular, Solar-Powered Gateway Can Connect Any Sensor From Anywhere
With Pulse, you can easily connect any sensor, access it from anywhere and set up rules to control devices.
In essence, Pycno’s Pulse modular gateway is a home automation platform that can connect and control smart devices, sensors, and actuators in both indoor and outdoor environments, from anywhere. The gateway boasts a myriad of wired, wireless, and RF connectivity options, including LoRa, Bluetooth 5, Wi-Fi, and 2G/3G/LTE, making it suitable for any number projects or home automation endeavors.
On the wired peripheral side, Pulse can interface with I2C sensors such as temperature and humidity, serial sensors (openMV), SDI-12 weather sensors, RS485 sensors, relays, MOSFETs, and more. For wireless applications, the gateways can take advantage of smart home devices (Wi-Fi/Bluetooth 5), remote IoT devices (LoRa), and FSK RF devices (RF, 2G, 3G, LTE).
Virtually, anything can be connected, monitored, and controlled, as Pycno explains, “Let's say you wanted to monitor and control oxygen levels in your aquarium. With Pulse + Nero Kit, you would attach an oxygen sensor probe, as well as the pump to it, and set Pulse to trigger the pump in order to maintain healthy oxygen levels.
Under the hood, the Pulse modular gateway features an nRF52840 Arm Cortex-M4F SoC (1Mb Flash, 256Kb of RAM, with 32Mb internal memory for data logging/scripts), along with a SIM7600xx and SIM868 cellular modem for 2G/3G/LTE connectivity. It also packs GPS/GLONASS (2G Pulse), GPS/GLONASS/Beidou/Galileo (4G Pulse), Wi-Fi 802.11 b/g/n based on the ESP32/ESP32-S2/ESP8266, and LoRa 868MHz - 921MHz P2P LoRa supported (LoRaWAN planned). Rounding out the hardware is a 1.8W monocrystalline solar panel, USB-C port, multiport A/B 9-pin waterproof connectors, internal/external SIM, 1.8-inch OLED display, on/off switch, and 3500mAh Li-Po battery.
A unique feature built into the Pulse gateway is its use of modular sliding 3D-printed blocks, which can host any number of sensor and expansion boards, which connect via the multi-port A/B connectors. Users can analyze data via the Pulse dashboard, allowing users to monitor their devices, receive alerts, change rules, and more.
Pynco was recently funded on Kickstarter in four different kit forms, including the Nero kit (monitor water quality), Sky kit (weather station), Air kit (monitor air quality), and Terra kit (monitor soil conditions). Although still in its early stages, you can follow along with the project's development in the Pyco team's Facebook Group.