Hardware development and pilot PCB assembly for the Blues Notecard

Industry: IoT Devices

Technologies and processes we used during this project: Hardware Development, LTE, Wi-Fi, GPS, Low Power, High Density Interconnect, Secure Element, Electronic Manufacturing Service

The project involved hardware development, protype and pilot series production for the next generation of Blues Notecard devices.

The idea of the product is to let its users tackle their IoT challenges, without having to worry about the hard parts: connectivity, security and cloud platforms. All the user has to do is send data to the Notecard, and that data “magically” appears on their cloud.

The device is designed to use very little power when idle, and it packs several built-in features for security, motion sensing and connectivity, including Wi-Fi and cellular networking. All these fits into an industry-standard M.2 form factor, using a custom pinout for host communication.

Blues helps businesses and governments worldwide confidently create reliable and innovative connectivity solutions that deliver measurable value using IoT-driven data intelligence.

With Blues, customers can easily send and receive information to and from any device, anywhere, and at any time, improving business operations while reducing costs.

Their flagship products, Notecard and Notehub, solve the biggest challenges associated with IoT connectivity, making it easy to securely cloud-connect any physical product.

The next-generation Notecard is built on the foundation of the original Notecards, providing more processing power, expanded connectivity options, and advanced power path management, while retaining an excellent user experience and a compact form factor.

Our engineering team was tasked with studying the existing system and upgrading it, while also hardening it against the global supply chain issues that plagued the early 2020s. The primary update was a switch to a more powerful STM32U5 series MCU, which features a small BGA footprint requiring an HDI PCB. Among other updates were an onboard Wi-Fi SoC and antenna, BoM optimization and external power supply support.

The development cycle was short, resulting in four different PCB variants, all developed from scratch, enabling Blues to switch between different LTE modem manufacturers and form factors.

These engineering efforts were supported by our manufacturing team, which produced not only the prototypes, but also the pilot batch.

The Notecard v2 was successfully developed, certified and produced in quantities of thousands, it’s available for purchase right now at shop.blues.com!

We’ve helped design and produce multiple development kits as well to help prospective clients and developers onboard to the Blues ecosystem easier. The Notecard is used in many system integrations as a connectivity module, together with its cloud services. Several devices Byte Lab worked on also use the Notecard.

As the world continues to evolve, so does the Notecard ecosystem. That’s why we provide ongoing support and continuous development to help Blues meet the needs of its clients.