LoRa-E5 the Seeed Studio STM32-WL module

STM32-WL is the new ST family supporting LoRa and LoRaWAN in, not a single chip but a single die. I did not yet written on it (busy busy busy) but this technology is really interesting as it resulting on a simplified architecture with less chip in your circuit and at the end a lower power consumption, a lower footprint and a lower cost.

LoRa-E5 from Seeed studio is a module containing a STM32-WL circuit and the associated RF circuitry to simplify design based on such chip. Its public price is $9.9 for the module alone and you can also find different boards using it. This price is in the maker market but a bit high for a such system for mass production. This module contains the stronger STM32WL family chip, chip price is 3.71€ / 1000 on mouser. But the module includes all the circuitry around and facilitate your design.

The module is mainly maker market and comes with software to be immediately used by end-user within an Arduino or equivalent environment. It can also be re-flashed for being used with your own software in it. The cortex M4 in is is stronger than most of the Arduino platform.

Let’s see what this chip is and how to use it.

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Code optimization with Stm32 Cube IDE

I’m using STM32 Cube IDE suite for STM32 development. This suite is based on Eclipse and GCC and it works quite well. In a recent project I was looking for some optimization I could apply on top of the basic existing settings to reduce the FLASH and RAM size.

In this post I want to share what I found and how it helped me.

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IoT Decoded Podcast EP#6

IoT decoded #6, the monthly LPWAn podcast analyzing the IoT news and trends. Register to podcast : looking for feed subscription on bottom right of this web page. Or search for IoT Decoded on Apple Podcast.

This month is mainly about LoRaWan and TheThingsConference taken place in Amsterdam en of january.

We are talking about TTN number and coming Packet Broker. We also see what is going on with STM32WL and Murata 1SJ new integrated solutions. LoRaWan 2.4GHz is also a really interesting technology for operating solutions worldwide in domains like smart building/home and industry. And much more…

HTMicron iMPC the STM32-S2LP Sigfox SIP

HTMicron is a Brazilian company making System In Package (SIP) solution. During Sigfox Connect, they shown a STM32-SLP product and gave me an eval board for reviewing.

This type of solution is interesting as it is really compact and easy to add in your design: you get a powerful ARM chip from ST + all the electronic needed for a Sigfox global communication system. There is no need for an extra component around the chip, more than an antenna and a power supply.

The price for the SIP is going to be around $5.

Let see how to use that chip.

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IoT Decoded Podcast EP#5

IoT decoded #5, the monthly LPWAn podcast analyzing the IoT news and trends. Register to podcast : looking for feed subscription on bottom right of this web page.

This month is about different news on LPWAn:

Yadom Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-091 breakout board under review

Murata CMWX1ZZABZ chip is actually famous for being a powerful LoRaWan multi zone module also able to communicate over Sigfox.

I’ve already published a technical post on Murata CMWX1ZZAB chip in a previous post. You will also find an implementation based on my IoT SDK. Yadom has just released a breakout board ( BRKABZ01) for this chip making it accessible for hackers and for easier prototyping.

This post is going to review this board and demo how to access it really quickly. Are you ready ?

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Getting started with ST Murata LoRaWan board

ST Micro-Electronics is providing a development board with a Murata CMWX1ZZABZ-091 chip. This device is a module containing a STM32L0 chip (192Kb of Flash / 20Kb of RAM) associated with a Semtech SX1276 radio chip. This module can be used as a SoC for developing LoRaWan IoT devices. The Semtech chip is also capable of Sigfox. This module is a bit expensive but it is actually the one allowing LoRaWan and Sigfox communication in any of the RCZ zones.

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Send Sigfox messages with STM32 + S2LP

STM32 solution for using Sigfox is actually one of the best offer on the market has the solution is powerful, low consumption and allows global coverage with the use of the last Sigfox library versions including Monarq, Bubble… Different module providers are actually designing solutions based on this platform.

In this post we are going to see how to configure the STM32 platform, starting from a STM32L053 devkit plus a S2LP extension. Using a eclipse/gcc environment. The environment installation is described in this post about installing Eclipse for STM32.

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