Despite our obvious reliance on vehicles, manufacturers must continue to develop and embrace new technologies in order to remain competitive. As we move towards new ownership models, these differentiating factors will have an increasingly important influence on consumer choice.  Guest blog written by Fredrik Lönegård, Senior Product Marketing Manager, and Peter Karlsson, Head of Technology, Product Center Short Range Radio u-blox

u-blox has announced that its GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) technology is being used in a smart altimeter for skydivers, paragliders, wingsuit pilots and other aerial athletes. Dekunu Technologies’ Dekunu One SmartAlti is a body-worn altimeter that provides a similar quality of information about a user’s altitude and position in the sky as pilots receive in their cockpits.

To differentiate their offering in a fiercely competitive market, e-micromobility brands continuously refine their services to make them more convenient, satisfying, fun, and, ultimately, the best way to get from one place to another. But there’s a lot going on behind the scenes - a lot of complexity to manage - to create the illusion of simplicity needed for customers to return to the same brand again and again. In this blog post, we ...

u-blox has announced that iWave Systems Technologies, an Indian-based hardware design firm, has selected the u-blox JODY-W2 multiradio module for its powerful i.MX8 system-on-module (SOM) and single-board computer (SBC) designs. The solutions target complex consumer, medical, and industrial embedded computing applications.

How on earth, you might wonder, can GPS receivers use weak electromagnetic signals emitted from distant satellites to determine its position to within just a few meters (or even centimeters)? To a large extent, it’s because they are excellent timing devices that determine their position based on the time it takes for the satellite signals to reach them from orbit.

u-blox has announced the commercial launch of its IoT Security-as-a-Service offering. Available on both the u-blox SARA-R4 and SARA-R5 series of LTE-M cellular IoT modules, this innovative solution makes it extremely simple to protect data from malicious third parties, both on the device and during transmission from the device to the cloud. Its out-of-the box, simple, secure, and cost effective onboarding process to leading cloud IoT platforms sp...

Without reliable real time knowledge on the whereabouts of each individual e-scooter, e-bike, or e-motorcycle in a fleet, today’s platform-based business model in micromobility would simply fall apart. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single provider that doesn’t depend on satellite-based positioning information. As a result, micromobilty has, in just a few years, become a key market for GNSS receiver manufacturers.

u-blox has announced the NORA-B1 Bluetooth module, the newest member of its short range radio portfolio. Based on Nordic Semiconductor’s latest nRF5340 Bluetooth low energy chipset – hosting a powerful Arm Cortex M33 dual core MCU – NORA-B1 is designed to meet the needs of performance-oriented applications in areas such as industrial, medical, and smart building and smart city markets.

u-blox has confirmed that its Bluetooth 5 modules are being built into wearable devices that are helping to combat the global COVID-19 pandemic. Available as either a wristband or a pendant, the TDS 50 has been developed by Electronic Precepts to present a highly-effective track and trace solution, with data being directly stored on the device then periodically sent to a web server.

What do e-scooters, e-bikes, e-mopeds, and e-motorcycles all have in common? Obviously, they are all two-wheelers. They are all battery powered, as the 'e-' prefix suggests. They are gaining traction in cities around the world in shared micromobility schemes and, increasingly, also for private use. And less visible to the naked eye, they are all IoT devices on wheels.

u-blox has announced that its current GNSS platforms, from u-blox M8 and beyond, support the recently completed BeiDou navigation satellite system modernisations, improving the availability of GNSS positioning services. The opening ceremony of the BeiDou-3 global navigation satellite system (GNSS) was held in Beijing on July 31st, officially celebrating the expansion of coverage offered by the critical Chinese space infrastructure to a global use...

The IoT is a complex organism. On one end of the spectrum, it comprises billions of data-gathering, functionality-enabling IoT end-devices deployed the world over in homes, cities, vehicles, factories, and just about anywhere else. On the other end is the cloud, a network of data centres distributed across multiple continents, where data are stored and processed, often using Artificial Intelligence (AI) algorithms to reveal otherwise hard-to-gain...

u-blox has announced that, going forward, DOT Telematik und Systemtechnik’s ultra-robust, solar-powered X-Rayl Solar Pointer logistics tracker will feature the u-blox LARA-R211 LTE Cat 1 modem with GSM fallback and positioning capability.

Many IoT (Internet of Things) projects fail due to unpredictable costs tipping the balance sheets. A major factor of this and one of the biggest contributors to the cost per device simply boils down to the amount of data being transmitted - a cost that can be mitigated, at least in part, by choosing an efficient way of communicating between devices and applications.

You’re designing a mass-market OBD dongle for consumer vehicles with a built-in latest-gen multiband, multi-constellation GNSS receiver. Its datasheet promises two-metre CEP68 position accuracy, which means that 68% of its measurements are within 2.0 metres of its true position.

u-blox has partnered with Cohda Wireless to produce an advanced V2X solution for the cooperative intelligent transport market. Cohda’s world-leading V2X software stack will support the u-blox V2X chip UBX-P3 for connectivity based on DSRC/802.11p standards.

There’s power in numbers. It’s true in tech too. Connecting up to a staggering 32’767 nodes into a single mesh network (at least in theory), Bluetooth mesh technology sends messages across the network, hopping node to node from their source to their destination with a maximum of 127 hops per trip.

Over the past two decades, satellite-based positioning has become an indispensable, every-day technology that we constantly rely on - often even without being aware of it. With the relentless expansion of applications and use cases, driven largely by falling cost of ownership and improvements in positioning accuracy, there will soon be one GNSS receiver in operation for every person on the planet.

Over the past year or two, low power wide area cellular technologies, the likes of LTE-M and NB-IoT, have played a vital role in growing the industrial IoT. By delivering reliable service up to 100km from the nearest cell tower, connected devices that communicate using LPWA technologies can increase the geographical area within which they stay connected to the cloud.

u-blox and Sapcorda Services have announced their partnership to implement the newly established SPARTN format as correction interface, paving the way to bringing their SAPA GNSS (global navigation satellite system) augmentation services to the u‑blox F9 platform.