Seeed Studio Seeks Feedback on an STM32-Based LoRa CAN Bus Vehicle Monitoring Board
Currently at the design stage, Seeed's long-range monitoring board needs community feedback before it heads to production.
Seeed Studio has revealed a design for a vehicle monitoring platform, offering CAN bus connectivity and a LoRa long-range radio — and is looking for community feedback before it begins production.
"We’re designing a Vehicle Monitoring Device based on a Seeed LoRa E5 and CAN bus," Seeed Studio's Lily Li explains of the company's planned board design. "With this module, you can build a LoRa sensor network where you can use the onboard CAN bus to read the sensor data of the car and send the data back through LoRa."
Built as a carrier board for the company's LoRa-E5 module, the vehicle monitoring board would include an STMicroelectronics STM32WLE5JC microcontroller with 32-bit Arm Cortex-M4 ultra-low power processor core running at up to 48MHz and a Semtech SX126x LoRa radio with (G)FSK, (G)MSK, and BPSK modulation support. The CAN bus, meanwhile, would run through a Microchip MCP2515 controller and a Texas Instruments SN65HVD230 transceiver.
Other features of the board include the promise of a low overall power draw with the option to power down both the CAN bus and output power, support for 7-28VDC power input as well as USB and lithium battery support, on-board USB-UART capabilities, support for external antennas, and two Grove connectors for ease of expansion.
At the time of writing, however, Seeed was still undecided as to whether to turn the design into a commercial product. "We need to get your valuable input and feedback before we move forward to manufacture the product," Li explains. "Do you like this design? Shall we scale it up to make it available in our official store? What other features/IOs/functions that you’d love to add to this product? Any price suggestions?"
Those looking to provide said feedback can do so on the company's forum, or via the Seeed Studio Discord server.