Ultimate Tracker based on nRF54 and Blues Notecard cellular

For the board design competition, I am going to design a tracker device. I call it "Ultimate tracker". The device is based on Nordic Semiconductor nRF54L15 SoC and Blues Notecard cellular. The device can also be added with nRF7002 WiFi chip for WiFi based location services.

The Blues notecard is a device that works globally and uses cellular technologies such as NB-IoT, LTE-M and 4G fallback. It is designed using Quicktel 5G module for IoT applications. The module also included integrated GNSS support. Hence it can provide cell based and GPS based locationing services. The Notecard has I2C and serial communication library that host (e.g. microcontroller) can send request using JSON commands. These JSON can be used to send data to Blues cloud service Notehub.io.

From Notehub the data can be routed to other cloud application for online dashboard, device management and also remote firmware update over the air.

For this project I will use nRF54L15 SoC as host to send data and commands to the notecard and from there to Notehub. I can use I2C or serial communication between these devices to talk to each-other.

The nRF54 can also be interfaced with nRF7002 WiFi chip over Q/SPI to have WiFi based location services possible. Hence out of these three locations one with more accurate and latest can be used for location data.

I have also added a pressure/altitude sensor in the schematic to have data for altitude measurement to have an idea of altitude of the device hence the device can be located in 3D.

Looking at the contest awards, I am creating this PCB using nRF54L15, number of LEDs to be considered for available requirements and awards.

Schematic

The schematic is designed using Autodest 360 and it is divided into sections. Looking at each section the first one is power supply. The device is battery operated hence it has battery charging IC from Texas Instruments. Then there is buck and boost converters for supplying the SoC and notecard. Notecard needs 1.8V for low power operation that buck converter can provide. The boost converter will convert the 1.8V to 3.3V required for nRF54 SoC and Notecard VCC.

The next portion is nRF54 SoC and circuit around SoC. The following image is for that. The next is SIM card holder circuit that communicated with notecard using MMC interface. Then the next is M.2 connector to fix Notecard. There is USB connected to the notecard over there for browser-based command and response. The next after that is pressure/altitude sensor that can accurately measure altitude. The last one is for antenna and matching circuit for GNSS and cellular communication.

Additionally, there is debugger connection and RGB LED connection for status monitoring of the notecard activity in the schematic.