Colorado-based SparkFun Electronics is helping Digi improve its XBee development boards and adapters.

“They were a maker company, a hacker company,” said Digi’s Bob Blumenscheid at last week’s Embedded World show in Nuremberg. “They have worked with XBee a lot making little connectivity boards, all different kinds, and we have got them to make different boards for XBee.”

Each SparkFun device received a complete overhaul and modernisation so it supports the entire line of XBee through-hole modules. Power supplies have been updated for cellular support.

“The boards are very inexpensive,” said Blumenscheid. “We found enterprise companies were going to them for proofs of concept.’

The SparkFun Qwiic system has been added for fast attachment of sensors and actuators, with no soldering required. There’s a customisable user button, labelling has been standardised and each design has been reviewed by Digi electrical engineering to confirm it meets or exceeds technical requirements. All the boards are open-source designs, so anyone can download the schematics and layout files.

Both Digi and SparkFun (www.sparkfun.com) products aim to lower engineering costs while improving time to market for creators of connected devices. This collection of boards can help speed the prototype-to-production process.

“An example is an Arduino board for XBee, so people can prototype for Arduino,” said Blumenscheid.

A full-featured development board gives access to all the functionality of the XBee. It includes two USB-C connectors for uart communication and firmware updates, a Qwiic connector for sensors and peripherals, as well as reset and user buttons plus various diagnostic and user LEDs. The development board also has the ability to update cellular firmware through a specially designed connector.

“What we can now do is go from concept to production,” said Blumenscheid. “We started with the development kit for SparkFun, but they can also sell all the pieces you need. They take different sensors and we can create a sensor-to-cloud design. There is a whole range of different sensors and we are having customers thinking about what they are going to do with all this. Customers can buy the components and start trying things. Suddenly, you have proof of concept and prototyping of an IoT project in days.”

He said Digi (www.digi.com) was seeing a lot of good reactions to this.

“It is making IoT easy,” he said. “That is what we are trying to do. We bundle the hardware, software and services together and it just works. The challenge of getting everything to work together can be difficult and the ecosystem can be fragile.”

• Digi has introduced ConnectSensor XRT-M (www.digi.com/products/networking/infrastructure-management/industrial-automation/digi-connect-sensor-xrt-m), the latest addition to its remote monitoring and control portfolio. Powered by Digi Axess, it is designed to deliver reliable and seamless remote monitoring and management. It offers edge and cloud-based control options, with a management platform equipped with an intuitive interface for streamlining data management and enhancing operational efficiency.