5G IoT Dev Board : Microchip® AVR-IoT Cellular Mini

5G is already here, but it is very hard to find a very well made & supported 5G ready Development board for quickly prototyping Cellular IoT Embedded Applications.

Microchip® decided to address this demand with the introduction of the AVR-IoT Cellular Mini Development board. The AVR-IoT Cellular Mini is able to provide a robust & compact platform to start building sensor and actuator nodes on 5G narrowband IoT networks with an 8-bit MCU. It’s reasonably priced at 60$.

What Powers the Board?

1. Microcontroller: AVR128DB48 - 8 bit, 128K of flash, Multi-Voltage I/O, and a set of internal operational amplifiers.

2. Cryptographic IC: ATECC608B - It provides security protocols and allows secure storage of private keys

3. 5G Ready LTE-M Modem: Sequans Monarch 2

Useful Hardware Features:

1. On-board Debugger

2. Li-Ion/LiPo Battery Charger, with charge status LED

3. USB, Battery, and external-input power options

4. VEML3328 Color Sensor

5. MCP9808 Temperature Sensor

6. Five User LEDs

7. Two Mechanical Buttons

8. Adafruit Feather compatible edge connector

9. Nano SIM Card Holder, eSIM Footprint

10. Well documented Hardware :

    1. Altium PCB Files: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ProductDocuments/BoardDesignFiles/AVR-IoT_Cellular_Mini_Altium_Project.zip

    2. Schematics: https://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/aemDocuments/documents/MCU08/ProductDocuments/BoardDesignFiles/AVR-IoT_Cellular_Mini_Schematics.pdf

Software Support:

1. Preloaded Firmware can Connect with AWS

2. Full Arduino IDE support

3. Supports HTTPS, MQTT etc

4. Well Documented Github Page: https://github.com/microchip-pic-avr-solutions/avr-iot-cellular-arduino-library

Price: 60$

Want to buy?: https://www.microchip.com/en-us/development-tool/EV70N78A