Blues has announced a series of enhanced offerings based on its flagship product, Notecard. The expanded Notecard offerings include Notecard Cell+Wi-Fi, Notecard Wi-Fi, Notecard LoRa, and Notecard Chips Edition options that enable additional reliable and hybrid connectivity, positioning accuracy, and scalable development.
Customer demand for connectivity within a broad variety of real-world environments is driving the need for multiple wireless technologies. While cellular connectivity by far remains the preferred option for global “low power wide area” (LPWAN) wireless connectivity, the diversity of real-world commercial applications often requires hybrid solutions that also encompass technologies such as Wi-Fi and LoRa. The ability for communications products to readily adapt to multiple radio access technologies such as cellular, Wi-Fi, and LoRa is referred to as wireless harmonisation.
“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.”
Blues’ industry-first Notecard Cell+Wi-Fi offering integrates cellular and Wi-Fi 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 seamlessly 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+Wi-Fi – The new Notecard Cell+Wi-Fi incorporates both cellular and Wi-Fi support out of the box. Customers can default to cellular and turn off Wi-Fi, 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 Wi-Fi – The new Notecard Wi-Fi 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.
The Notecard Cell+Wi-Fi offering is available for purchase immediately. The Notecard Wi-Fi and Notecard LoRa offerings are available for beta testing by interested customers, and will be available for purchase later this year.
A challenge facing organisations when they scale to hundreds of thousands of devices is the need to reduce costs by whatever means possible. One approach to reducing costs is a process known as chip-down design.
Blues is introducing a new Notecard design option for customers who reach that level of scale:
- Notecard Wi-Fi 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.
These new, easy-to-implement Notecard offerings enable organisations of all sizes to create intelligent, data-driven devices in industries including manufacturing, clean energy and healthcare.
Blues’s expanded Notecard offerings are available for purchase or ordering as of September 20, 2023, on the company’s website. The previous Notecard versions are still available for purchase as well.
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