Smart meters, trackers and sensors can be connected over long distances using Mikroe’s NB-IoT Click development board based on a Quectel module.

The compact add-on development board provides reliable NB-IoT connectivity for embedded applications. This Click board from Serbian firm Mikroe cuts development time by providing hardware and software products based on proven standards.

It was created around the BC65 multi-band NB-IoT module from Quectel (www.quectel.com) with low power consumption and which is compliant with 3GPP Release 13 and 14 standards.

Nebojsa Matic, CEO of Mikroe, said: “This new Click board enables designers to prove that they can connect smart meters, asset trackers and sensors over long distances, then begin full product development immediately without having to learn new tools or pay for expensive development kits.”

Other applications include smart parking, wearables, smart city deployments, agriculture, environmental monitoring and home appliances that requires wide-area coverage and stable communication.

A member of Mikroe’s 1900-strong MikroBus-enabled Click board family, NB-IoT 6 Click (www.mikroe.com/nb-iot-6-click) operates across a frequency range from approximately 700MHz to 2.2GHz, supporting LTE bands B1, B3, B5, B8, B20 and B28 with a transmission power of 23dBm ±2dB and a receiving sensitivity of -114dBm. Alongside the main uart interface with hardware flow control, it integrates auxiliary and debug uarts, general-purpose 10bit ADC channel, SIM card holder, network status LED, and SMA LTE antenna connector.

The board is compatible with the MikroBus socket and can be used on any host system supporting the MikroBus standard. It comes with the MikroSDK (www.mikroe.com/mikrosdk) open-source libraries, offering flexibility for evaluation and customisation.

Click boards (www.mikroe.com/click-boards) follow a modular prototyping add-on board standard invented by Mikroe, which changes the way users add functionalities to development boards. Click boards let design engineers change peripherals easily, cutting months off development time. To enable hundreds of Click board to be connected to the microcontroller or microprocessor, the MikroBus uniform connection interface allows designers to connect any Click board to a main board instantly.

Mikroe (www.mikroe.com) releases a Click board nearly every day, and many microcontroller companies including Microchip, NXP, Infineon, Dialog, STM, Analog Devices, Renesas and Toshiba include the MikroBus (www.mikroe.com/mikrobus) socket on their development boards.