Massachusetts-based Blues Wireless has released a Notecarrier accelerator board with Qwiic ports, improved antennas and a black PCB for developing wirelessly-connected IoT services with the Notecard.

The Notecarrier-A maintains the same form factor as the previous Notecarrier-A line of the AL, AE and AA. However, the antennas have been switched from Pulse to the Ignion NN03-310.

“One of the most critical pieces of feedback we received from customers was the GPS performance of the Pulse antenna just wasn’t adequate,” said Rob Lauer, director of developer relations at Blues Wireless. “With the new Ignion antennas, cellular performance is just as good as the Pulse and the GPS performance has proven to be more than 5dB better in our testing.”

This results in faster GPS fixes, including improving TTFF (time to first fix) from what was more than 120 seconds to less than 60 seconds.

The company has added two Qwiic ports to provide solder-free expansion of an IoT product for communication over I²C. Qwiic connectors are daisy-chainable and polarised so users can be certain their connection is correct the first time.

Even though the Notecarrier-A is a replacement for the AL, AE and AA Notecarriers, the company says it will continue to support those Notecarriers going forward.

The Notecarrier-A retains the connectors on the back for those who want to solder their own AA battery harness.

Notecarriers are available in several form-factors to facilitate rapid prototyping. Depending on the variant, a Notecarrier may be designed with direct host integration, size optimisation, integrated cellular and wifi, and GNSS antennas, or even to be soldered directly into a product for low-volume production.

Notecarriers are designed to bridge the gap between prototype and production for the Notecard. The Notecard is designed to be socketed directly onto the circuit board using an edge connector socket, along with a user’s MCU, sensors and controls. While such a model provides a modular configuration for the final product, it can make prototyping unnecessarily difficult.

Notecarriers offer breakout connections for the Notecard, as well as circuitry to provide power management, protection and signal amplification.