At Sensors Expo 2019, Marc Hervieu from STMicroelectronics explains different development kits that are available to help designers expedite their design efforts in several areas, including cellular, LoRa and cloud connectivity for the Internet of Things.

Working with partners Verizon (ST SIM card) and Quectel (ST LTE modem), the ST Microelectronics / Verizon LTE-M IoT Starter Kit includes an X-Nucleo Expansion Board and an STM32L4 Discovery kit (B-L475E-IOT01A for IoT node) for a low-power wide-area network (cellular LPWAN).

The kit simplifies applications for cellular devices to a variety of cloud partners. The intent is for designers who do not have cellular experience. Using X-Cube- Cellular, Microsoft Azure IoT Central and Amazon FreeRTOS, it helps expand the user experience. All the cellular tasks are performed by middleware. The kit is a reference design that can be used for development of new products that includes a MEMS accelerometer and gyroscope IC and MEMS magnetometer for 9-axis motion sensing, a barometric pressure sensor and a temperature/humidity sensor.

For LoRa LPWAN, a dev kit is available based on partnering with MachineQ. A quick start guide/tutorial is available.  The dev system communicates through an IoT gateway to a MachineQ provisioning tool. The 8-channel gateway, dev kit and 1 year of MQCentral access are part of the dev kit package.

An extension of the LoRa dev kit is STEVAL-STRKT01, a LoRa asset tracking reference design. By adding X-NUCLEO-GNSS1A1 expansion board with a shield, a LoRa IoT tracker can provide asset, people and animal tracking. The kit includes environmental (HTS221 and LPS22HB) sensors.