SparkFun, CircuitDojo Launch Thing Plus nRF9160 with LTE, NB-IoT Cellular Connectivity Baked In
Feather-compatible board boasts extremely low standby power and both LTE and NB-IoT cellular connectivity as standard.
SparkFun has announced a partnership with CircuitDojo to launch a new Feather form factor device built around Nordic Semiconductor's nRF9160: The SparkFun Thing Plus nRF9160, designed for use with the Zephyr real-time operating system (RTOS).
"SparkFun has teamed up with CircuitDojo to bring you the SparkFun nRF9160 Thing Plus, featuring the powerful Nordic nRF9160 microcontroller in a Feather-compatible footprint," the company explains of the fruit of its latest partnership. "This little chip is capable of both CAT M1 LTE and NB-IoT cellular communication and is designed to work with Zephyr, the go-to RTOS for embedded development. To make the Thing Plus even easier to use, this board utilizes our handy Qwiic Connect System which means no soldering or shields are required to connect it to the rest of your system!"
The SparkFun Thing Plus nRF9160 is built with two things in mind: Communication capabilities, with CAT M1 LTE and NB-IoT cellular connectivity as standard, and low power draw. According to the company's internal testing, the board draws just 2µA in its lowest-power standby state and comes equipped with a 3.3V buck-boost converter designed to prolong battery life — while also accepting wired power on its USB Type-C connector.
The Nordic nRF9160 which drives the board offers an Arm Cortex-M33 processor, 256kB of RAM, and 1MB of flash with SparkFun adding an extra 4MB of external flash. The module offers "Easy DMA," and can be configured for up to four SPI, I2C, and UART connections along with I2S, four PWM, a 12-bit analog-to-digital converter, and two real-time clocks plus a Programmable Peripheral Interconnect (PPI) interface.
SparkFun is selling the new Thing Plus nRF9160 for $129.95 before volume discounts, and has published a hookup guide to walk the buyer through getting started with the software development kit on Windows, macOS, and Linux.