Duo creates a low-cost Feather-compatible board to accelerate IoT development
In September, cellular solutions provider Blues Wireless announced its new offering, Swan, a low-cost embeddable STM32L4R5-based microcontroller board that’s positioned to accelerate the development and deployment of battery-powered IoT solutions. The product launch comes in the wake of Blues Wireless garnering $22 million in Series A funding this summer to support investment in R&D for hardware and services to integrate data into the cloud.
Swan is designed for applications necessitating ample memory or a high degree of I/O expandability while still being affordable, such as edge-based inferencing and remote monitoring. For this reason, Swan is viewed as being complementary to Blue Wireless’ Notecard line of cellular device-to-cloud data pumps.
“While building Notecard-based remote monitoring solutions, customers have repeatedly asked us for recommendations that might help accelerate their creation of highly intelligent battery-powered devices,” said Ray Ozzie, founder and CEO of Blues Wireless. “To them, there are many impediments. Our core mission is to help them reduce the time from concept-to-deployment and concept-to-value. Swan, as with Notecard, is a unique solution that will accelerate their journey and get them to delivery and scale with enterprise-class security, quality, and robustness.”
Swan is suited to feather-compatible boards, and developers can use it with Adafruit’s sensors and FeatherWing-compatible carriers. In addition, the microcontroller’s design allows it to be soldered directly to a parent PCB to utilize Swan’s I/O capabilities.
The MCU operating at up to 120 Mhz provides developers with 640 KB of RAM, 2 MB of flash, and 55 general purpose I/O ports, including eight analog, 16 digital, one SPI, one Quad SPI, two I2C, four UART, and one USB. Swan is powered by USB, battery, or line power, which each operate independently, and with a changeable software 2 A regulator for powering external sensors. When in low-power operating mode, the Swan board only draws about 8 µA while retaining memory, making it suitable for battery-powered devices.
Swan comes with support for C/C++, Arduino, and CircuitPython, and includes a CORTEX Debug connector enabling the use of advanced development environments such as Visual Studio Code, IAR, and STM32CubeIDE. In addition, users can access training in machine learning in Swan on the Blues Developers platform.
Swan is currently available for $25 and comes with an SWD programmer and debugger for an additional $15. The Feather Starter Kit for Swan is available for pre-order for $99.
Blue Wireless’ Swan came just a year after launch of its flagship product, Notecard, when it raised $11 million in seed funding. The recent Series A funding was led by Sequoia Capital, Lachy Groom, XYZ Venture Capital, and Bill Gates.
“Despite the advent of IoT, most machines and devices are still not connected due to building and shipping complexities,” said Mike Vernal, partner at Sequoia. “Blues Wireless solves these issues by providing a simple way to build cellular connectivity into any device. We’ve been deep believers in Ray’s vision for mass-scale IoT since the seed, and we are excited to double down as the company grows.”