This LTE Dev Board Doesn’t Need an Arduino or Raspberry Pi

Start planning a device built for cellular LTE service and you’ll immediately notice a frustrating reality: almost all of the off-the-shelf options are “dumb” modem modules meant to be used with a separate microcontroller development board or single-board computer (SBC). Open Stack solves that problem as a standalone 4G LTE development board you can use without an Arduino or Raspberry Pi.

Open Stack is, in essence, a development board built around a 4G LTE IoT module. That module, a Quectel EC200U-CN, was designed for IoT applications and can handle most things on its own, so you don’t need to pair Open Stack with a dev board or SBC. It is perfect for a huge variety of applications, because you don’t need any extra hardware. That keeps costs and power consumption down.

If, for example, you want to build a battery-operated weather station that sends data over LTE, you can just purchase an Open Stack board, a battery, and something like a BME280 sensor. Connect that sensor to the GPIO pins on the Open Stack, program it, and you’re done.

In fact, those GPIO pins match the Raspberry Pi layout, so you can use Raspberry Pi HATs with Open Stack.

On top of the 4G LTE cellular connectivity, Open Stack also offers Bluetooth 4.2, GPS, and even full GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) capability. GNSS provides much higher accuracy than GPS alone, so that’s very appealing.

Perhaps best of all, Open Stack has native RTOS support and you can program in C. So, they aren’t any frustrating specialized compilation toolchains to worry about—just use what you already know.

If you find this all as compelling as I do, you have until March 11th to back the Open Stack Kickstarter campaign. Backers can get an Open Stack board starting at €55 (about $66 USD), with a few bucks more to add a GPS antenna. Rewards should ship in April.