Industrial IoT specialist Blues Wireless has expanded its flagship Notecard product offerings, boosting industrial IoT connectivity options. The expanded Notecard offerings include Notecard Cell+WiFi, Notecard WiFi, Notecard LoRa, and Notecard Chips Edition options that enable additional reliable and hybrid connectivity, positioning accuracy, and scalable development. 

Blues’ industry-first Notecard Cell+WiFi offering integrates cellular and WiFi connectivity options into one device. Its dynamic fallback modes deliver a more resilient and reliable network, enhanced geolocation, and expanded coverage and provide the flexibility to combine or switch between connectivity options. Blues’ Notecard LoRa provides enhanced wireless penetration, as well as an inexpensive way to deploy large fleets of devices.  

All Notecards integrate with Notehub, Blues’ software service designed to securely route Notecard data to the customer’s cloud application of choice. Additionally, Notecards are plug-compatible and field upgradeable, enabling even non-technical users to easily swap between connectivity options or ‘generations’ of radio access technologies, such as from 2G to 5G. 

Blues is introducing three new Notecard options beyond its existing Notecard Cellular offering: 

• Notecard Cell+WiFi – The new Notecard Cell+WiFi incorporates both cellular and WiFi support out of the box. Customers can default to cellular and turn off WiFi, vice versa, or enable both to ensure highly reliable connectivity despite location. The offering also provides expanded international and domestic coverage with enhanced carrier support.  
• Notecard WiFi – The new Notecard WiFi addresses customer demand for a simple, low-cost way to connect localised clusters of indoor devices securely to the cloud. 
• Notecard LoRa – The new Notecard LoRa offering addresses customer demand for connecting potentially large clusters of outdoor devices to the cloud. Packaging low-power LoRaWAN technology in a novel form, the offering shares the same ease of use and just works provisioning as its Notecard counterparts.    

“Blues understands that multiple connectivity options are necessary to empower businesses to transform physical products into data-driven intelligent services. With the expansion of our Notecard offerings, companies now have the flexibility to optimise their connection method for sending and receiving information between devices anywhere, at any time,” said Jim Hassman, Blues’ President and Chief Revenue Officer. “Whether our customers are developing ten devices or vastly scaling operations, or have devices located in fixed, remote, or mobile locations, our expanded Notecard offerings are affordable, accessible, and customisable.” 

The Notecard Cell+WiFi offering is available for purchase immediately. The Notecard WiFi and Notecard LoRa offerings are available for beta testing by interested customers, and will be available for purchase later this year. 

Blues is introducing a new Notecard design option for customers who reach that level of scale: 

• Notecard WiFi and LoRa Chips Editions – Blues’ new chip-down design option for Notecard allows customers to more economically scale their solutions without the need to compromise security or to modify firmware designed for the system-on-a-module (SOM) Notecard versions.  

“After years of connectivity struggles, we found Blues and adopted the Notecard/Notehub solution. The Blues cellular solution solved connectivity, security, and scalability issues,” said True Manufacturing Company. “Now, with this announcement of the expanded family of Notecards, Blues has really listened to customers and delivered a solution that leads industry trends. This is the kind of innovative partnership that allows OEMs to succeed in the IoT space.”