Electron AssetTracker No Longer Available

Hardware
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@n1849778, @rickkas7 designed the board and has not published the board design.

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Yes, I designed the board but haven’t published the design because I wanted to make a few changes first. I will make the design public when it’s done.

3 Likes
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Sounds good. Excited about it! Can’t wait!
What would be the difference between your board and “Adafruit Ultimate GPS FeatherWing”? Apart from the SMA connector and u-blox MAX-M8 GPS.
Is u-blox MAX-M8 GPS suppose to be better than “MTK3339 chipset” (from “Adafruit Ultimate GPS FeatherWing”)?
Maybe the question is too early to post.

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I think the performance of the u-blox MAX-M8 GPS is better than the GlobalTop PA6H, and it has some nice features like geofencing and the ability to download the almanac and ephemeris information over cellular for a faster time to first fix.

My board not only has the MAX-M8, but it also has a LIS3DH accelerometer (like the Particle AssetTracker). It also has a real-time clock, and FRAM (ferroelectric RAM). And two Grove connectors for sensors. All of the devices connect by I2C leaving serial and SPI available for other uses.

2 Likes
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Cool. Like it already.
Is the board size exactly the same as Adafruut Ultimate GPS? Including the 4 mounting holes locations?

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IMHO and experience with boron and Asset tracker V2, it will be useless, tiresome and time consuming trying to make it work the boron with the asset tracker v2. To make it work just as a tracker, if your are using the classic adapter, you should cut pin D6 and, then in the ATv2 put a wire between D6 and GND. In this way, you never be able to shutdown the GPS, and that will cause more consumption, if that is a concern to you, you should consider it. Even if you try to put on a sleep the boron, you will never be able to wake up using the LIS3DH, as the boron is not 5v tolerant.

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@n1849778
The Boron can be used with the following:




All the above use the Feather form factor and the tripler shield ties it all together.
There even exists a nice guide for this: https://blog.particle.io/learn-how-to-build-this-cellular-asset-tracker-with-a-particle-boron/ (Minus the LIS3DH, you’ll have to incorporate that yourself, but the library exists and it should be easy.)

To secure the boards to the tripler, consider using M4 standoffs and screws (@rickkas7 mentioned this elsewhere)

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When will this product become available?

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This is not a product. It is a custom board designed by @rickkas7 and he will be sharing the design files soon. You could then build your own.

2 Likes
30

Ahhh. Gotcha.

31

Hello rickkas7,

Hows that GPS breakout board (in purple) project coming along for you?
Is that board schematics available in Github?

image

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Wheeeennn???

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@rickkas7, any thoughts on this?

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None thoughts at all, I would realy be happy with one of this, maybe he don’t want to publish it because compete directly with the new tracker system. But for the guys abroad, the onboard sim is not the best option. I hope @rickkas7 could help us sharing his GPS. breakout board.

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That design works, but I later realized I could make it a lot simpler so I haven’t published that design but I never got around to making the simpler one.

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Hello @rickkas7, do you think there will be any change to get those designs? Even if is not optimized as you wish.

Thanks

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Hello @rickkas7 , could you please help us sharing your design, it does not need to be optimized. I really need it, because in adafruit is out of stock, the one you recommend to use it.

Thanks,

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I published the FeatherGPS6 design:

board
board1600×1067 547 KB

It’s a FeatherWing with:

  • u-blox MAX-M8 GNSS
  • SMA active antenna connector
  • LIS3DH accelerometer (optional)
  • FRAM (ferroelectric non-volatile RAM, optional)
  • GNSS lock LED (programmable)

Differences from Electron AssetTracker V2

While both this board and the Electron AssetTracker V2 have a u-blox MAX M8 GNSS, there are some notable differences:

  • There is no built-in GNSS antenna, there is only a SMA connector for an external active antenna.

  • The u-blox GNSS is connected by I2C in this board instead of UART serial. Since there is only one hardware serial port available on the Boron and Argon, using I2C frees up ports as I2C can be shared by many peripherals.

  • The LIS3DH is connected by I2C instead of SPI. Using I2C frees up the SPI pins and a CS pin.

  • This board contains an optional FRAM, ferro-electric non-volatile RAM. You don’t need to populate this, but it’s handy if you want to store some data that requires more permanence than retained memory but needs to be able to read and written frequently, where flash wear would be an issue.

  • There is no u-blox GNSS power control MOSFET. The GNSS has a large inrush of current when you power it on, and this will brown out a Boron or Argon and cause the MCU to reset. Instead, the GNSS is powered down in software.

  • The LED is not driven by the GNSS TIMEPULSE pin, it’s connected to a MCU GPIO (A5). This allows for a more useful status display.

Electron AssetTracker V2 LED FeatherGPS6 LED
GNSS Off Off Off
Scanning for satellites (<= 3 found) Off Slow Blink
Scanning for satellites (> 3 found) Off Fast Blink
GNSS lock Blink On
  • The other issues with TIMEPULSE are that it start blinking when GNSS time is locked, which can occur at 4 satellites, before location lock is achieved. This is confusing. Also, when in software power-down, TIMEPULSE is pulled high with a weak pull-up in the GNSS, which causes the LED to be lit dimly when in powerdown mode, which unnecessarily uses power.
2 Likes
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