Particle has introduced common availability of its Muon multi-radio Web of Issues (IoT) growth boards, designed round its M-Sequence system-on-modules — and has tweaked the design as a way to provide compatibility with Raspberry Pi-style {Hardware} Connected on High (HAT) equipment.
“Muon [is] Particle’s new multi-radio growth board, designed to simplify and revolutionize connectivity,” the corporate says of its newest growth board. “It is the primary and solely product to mix a full suite of widespread radios — constructed into the M-SoM are mobile, Wi-Fi, BLE, GNSS, NTN satellite tv for pc (relying on M-SoM inserted), after which the Muon moreover brings LoRaWAN and Ethernet.”
Particle’s impressively multi-radio modular Muon is now obtainable, after a redesign introduced Raspberry Pi compatibility. (📷: Particle)
Particle first confirmed off the Muon again in February 2024, similtaneously saying the M-SoM household of multi-radio system-on-modules. Again then, the service featured two feminine general-purpose enter/output (GPIO) headers on both facet of the board — very similar to the BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone household. By June it had modified its thoughts: what it is placed on sale now could be as an alternative impressed by the Raspberry Pi, shifting to a single 40-pin male GPIO header on the prime of the board.
That new type issue is not only for aesthetic functions, both: the GPIO header is designed to imitate the Raspberry Pi pinout, that means compatibility with all kinds of HATs and different equipment from the Raspberry Pi ecosystem. The board additionally features a devoted Quectel KG200Z LoRaWAN module, a Texas Devices TMP112A temperature sensor, Ambiq Micro AM1805 real-time clock (RTC) with watchdog functionality, and an Ethernet port powered by a WIZnet W5500.
The remainder of the performance relies on the M-SoM put in, with the North American model of the board coming bundled with the M-SoM M404 — delivering an Arm Cortex-M33 core working at as much as 200MHz, a Quectel BG95-M5 LTE-M mobile modem with 2G fallback, International Navigation Satellite tv for pc System (GNSS) reception, and a Realtek RTL8722DM with Bluetooth 5 Low Power (BLE) and dual-band 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi. There’s 3MB of RAM and 2MB of program flash obtainable for the person’s personal firmware, which — naturally — could make full use of Particle’s highly effective Web of Issues platform for information transit, administration, and over-the-air updates.
The unique Muon, unveiled final yr, used a pin structure nearer to a BeagleBoard.org BeagleBone. (📷: Particle)
“When you’ve constructed your prototypes and are able to scale up your operation,” the corporate guarantees, “you are able to do so with ease by switching to the M-SoM, our production-grade system-on-module. Merely port your firmware utilizing the {hardware} abstraction layer on our System OS and transition seamlessly from the Muon to the M-SoM, decreasing your invoice of supplies & rushing up growth time.”
The Muon LTE-M/2G variant for North America is now obtainable on the Particle retailer at $69.95, a $20 low cost over the deliberate $89.95 retail value; a European variant with an M-SoM M524 supporting LTE CAT1/3G/2G can be obtainable for these searching for connectivity throughout the pond, priced at $84.95. Each fashions include the Muon service board, M-SoM, GNSS antenna, wideband mobile antenna, and Wi-Fi/BLE antenna, however no LoRaWAN antenna; a bigger bundle that provides a plastic case, LoRaWAN antenna, USB cable, SMA to IPEX cable, and a 3250mAh battery is on the market at $79.95 for the North American and $94.95 for the European variants.
