Conexio Technologies, Inc.
Environmental Sensing
Nordic Semiconductor
Conexio Stratus is a tiny (50.8 mm x 22.86 mm) yet powerful development kit for creating cellular-connected electronic projects. It runs best-in-class Zephyr RTOS for connected devices and is a battery-operated platform, making it ideal for prototyping cellular IoT systems such as asset-tracking applications, environmental monitoring, and smart-meter monitoring, just to name a few.
Equipped with the Nordic nRF9160 System in Package (SiP), it supports LTE-M, NB-IoT, and Global Positioning System (GPS). Stratus has two onboard external U.FL antennas, one for the GPS and the other for LTE-M/NB-IoT, enabling it to support a global range of LTE bands.
Stratus has built-in battery charging, monitoring, and energy-harvesting circuitry that makes it easier to connect to and recharge the Li-Po battery, creating fully energy-autonomous applications. In addition, Stratus incorporates an accelerometer and a temperature-and-humidity sensor for detecting movement and for sensing its surrounding environment. Finally, Stratus provides 26 mixed-signal GPIOs for interfacing with external sensors, actuators, and other electronics.
To connect to IoT cellular networks out-of-the-box, Stratus comes with 500 MB of mobile data and a total of 250 SMS messages, valid for 10 years with service in more than 100 countries worldwide without additional costs, making it the most versatile IoT-development kit on the market.
Stratus is perfect for connecting existing projects to the Cloud or as a gateway to connect other local endpoints without having to worry about the infrastructure cost, making it useful for both professionals and hobbyists.
For example: Stratus is perfect for environmental monitoring and smart agriculture like precision farming, crop monitoring, climate and food supply-chain monitoring, and farm analytics. It’s also excellent for smart energy and utilities, and can enable smart grids, smart metering, and remote diagnostics for easy monitoring and billing. You could use Stratus for fleet management, to track your assets in real-time with seamless global coverage and end-to-end visibility, or for machine monitoring to enable predictive maintenance via cellular connectivity for Industry 4.0 applications. Stratus can be used in retail deployments, for smart checkout or supply chain management, or in the healthcare sector, to power mission-critical applications like remote patient monitoring and wearables.
Conexio Stratus also supports platforms like Edge Impulse, Memfault, and Golioth, leveraging machine learning (ML) to provide seamless Over-the-Air (OTA) updates to your devices. ML capabilities are extremely helpful in implementing predictive maintenance in scenarios where uninterrupted operation is particularly important, such as in smart factories. For easy data visualization and dashboard creation, Conexio Stratus also connects to Datacake, a low-code IoT platform that requires no programming.
MCU: Nordic nRF9160 Microcontroller with ARM Cortex M33
Modem
Micro USB
Energy harvester IC
Board power supply
Debugger & Programmer
User I/O
Antenna connections
Onboard sensors
Power switch
Physical
For expansion and interfacing with various sensors and hardware peripherals via standard interfaces (I²C, SPI, and UART), Conexio Stratus also comes with a shield as an optional add-on. Working with a Stratus shield requires no soldering and minimal wiring. Just plug the sensors, actuators, or displays into this shield using standard cables and stay focused on application design and coding.
Conexio Stratus is compatible with over 800+ sensor modules and boards from providers like Sparkfun, Mikroe, and Seeedstudio. This gives developers the ability to utilize a large array of sensor libraries, and extends the capabilities of Conexio Stratus to accelerate your IoT application testing and development.
Conexio Studio is a tool that allows you to create and debug Conexio Stratus + Zephyr RTOS projects in Visual Studio Code. To make application and project development fast and fun—for low-level application designers and novice IoT developers alike—the Conexio team has developed an extension for Visual Studio Code. Using Conexio Studio, you can build, compile, and deploy code to Conexio Stratus with minimal effort. Create projects with nRF Connect SDK and Zephyr RTOS with built-in templates created by the Conexio team. All examples and the VSCode extension will be available for download when the campaign begins.
Conexio Stratus | Thingy:91 | Actinius Icarus | nRF9160 Feather | Pebble Tracker | Thing Plus | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Manufacturer | Conexio | Nordic Semi | Actinius | CircuitDojo | IoTex | Sparkfun |
Total Pins | 33 | 8 | 28 | 28 | None | 28 |
I/O Pins | 26 | 8 | 21 | 20 | None | 20 |
Energy Harvester | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Accelerometer | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Environmental Sensors | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Onboard LEDS | 2 single-color | 1 RGB | 1 RGB | 2 single-color | 1 RGB | 2 single-color |
Sensor power gating | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Power switch | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Lipo battery charger | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
USB interface | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Debugging connector | Yes | Yes | No | No | Yes | No |
Prepaid Cellular data | 500 MB | 10 MB | 10 MB | 10 MB | No | 10 MB |
Cellular data validity | 10 years | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A | N/A |
SMS Data | 250 | No | No | No | No | No |
Dedicated sensor shield | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
VS Code development extension | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Breadboard compatible | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | No | Yes |
Edge Impulse ready | Yes | Yes | No | No | No | No |
Memfault ready | Yes | No | No | No | No | No |
Golioth ready | Yes | No | No | Yes | No | No |
Open-source | HW+SW | HW+SW | No | HW+SW | No | HW+SW |
Dimension | 50.8 x 22.8 mm | 58.8 x 58.5 mm | 50.8 x 22.8 mm | 50.8 x 22.8 mm | 53 x 35 mm | 58.42 x 22.86 mm |
Weight | ~5 g | 61 g | ~5 g | ~5 g | 10 g | ~5 g |
Price (USD) | $159 | $126.25 | $115 | $99 | $215 | $129.95 |
Once the campaign is fully funded, we will publish our open source files on GitHub. That will include our schematics, firmware project files, documentation, and software:
Stratus Getting Started documentation is now available at Conexio Learning Hub, and we welcome questions and discussion on our discussions forum on Github.
"Stratus stands out by integrating a unique solar energy harvesting feature so that your application can be fully self-reliant on power once deployed. "
"Rapidly develop IoT apps with Zephyer RTOS and the new VSCode plugin, Conexio Studio."
"[Stratus] can be used for building cellular-connected electronic projects such as asset tracking applications, smart wearables, smart farming, weather monitoring, smart meter monitoring, etc."
Produced by Conexio Technologies, Inc. in Chicago, IL.
Sold and shipped by Crowd Supply.
1 x Conexio Stratus, a compact yet powerful smart edge platform with onboard environmental sensors, accelerometer, solar energy harvester, global IoT SIM with 500MB cellular data, and 250 SMS valid for 10 years.
1 x Conexio Stratus shield addon that supports over 800+ sensor modules compatible with Mikro Bus, Sparkfun QWIIC, and SeeedStudio Grove sensors.
1 x LTE Flex antenna 1 x active GPS antenna 1 x Micro USB cable 1 x 10 pin IDC SWD cable for external debugging and programming
Chicago, IL · conexiotech.com
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