Cardholder-sized SOS device uses u-blox technology

James Neville, Director, MCM Electronics, explained: "We needed to offer a reliable and stable personal emergency location device to our customers, to allow for monitoring of isolated workers. u-blox, with its unique combination of cellular and GNSS positioning technology, and the quality, performance and robustness of its products, was the right choice."

Very light (75g) and ultra-compact (96x71x14.4mm), LONEworkr combines a 3.75G GSM modem solution providing up to six-band HSPA+ and quad-band GSM/EDGE data transmission with a concurrent reception of GPS/QZSS, GLONASS and BeiDou. It can send an alarm and its location to a Monitoring Center (MC), which will then call the device to verify the alarm and escalate whether the emergency is genuine.

"It was very exciting to collaborate with MCM Electronics, as we at u-blox are committed to support our customers by combining technologies for easy-to-use solutions," said Pietro Sbisa, Business Development Manager, u-blox Australia & New Zealand. "The u-blox professional grade modules embedded in LONEworkr follow the u-blox 'nested design' philosophy: to maintain form factor and software continuity. This enables customers to easily upgrade their products with each new generation of u-blox wireless modules, without having to change the PCB designs. In this case it can simplify a possible later transition to an LTE modem. The easy migration between u-blox products contributes to a maximised investment, simplified logistics and drastically reduced time-to-market."

The u-blox LISA-U200 UMTS/HSPA cellular module and the CAM-M8Q M8 concurrent GNSS antenna module are currently embedded in LONEWorkr. Migration to LTE technology and the addition of short range radio capabilities are planned.