Radiocrafts AS, a leading provider of RF modules and wireless connectivity solutions, announced on February 27th 2018 two new Wireless M-Bus modules, both with integrated sensor interfaces. The new modules are ideal for making Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN) or Low Power Wide Area Network (LPWAN) with wireless sensors.

“The sensor interface modules add significant value and benefit to our customers by removing the need for an external microcontroller to manage the sensors” says Anders Oldebäck, Sales and Marketing Director, Radiocrafts. “We see this as a major step in making IOT remote sensor networking a task that does not require specialist competence, and also a major step in reducing the overall system cost for the customers.”

Meeting the demand for easy access to sensor data, the new modules rely on a proven, robust and widely deployed protocol, the Wireless M-Bus standard (EN 13757). The protocol is very power efficient and ideal for sensors with an operating lifetime of 10-20 years on a single cell battery. The 169 MHz narrowband solution is recently gaining a lot of market traction as it is an optimal solution for Industrial sensor networks, where reliability, robustness and security are of great importance.

The RC1180-MSM operates at 868 MHz, and RC1701HP-MSM operates at 169 MHz, an expansion of the RC1180-MBUS3 and RC1701HP-MBUS4 industry proven modules. The new modules offer a dedicated interface for a number of industrial and environmental sensors, such as temperature, humidity and gas. The sensors are carefully selected to enable users to build complete sensor nodes by just adding the sensor, an antenna and a power supply to the compact MSM module. Sensor interfaces supported includes analogue inputs, GPIO, SPI and
I2C.

Wireless M-Bus is of particular interest for environmental sensors in buildings, at larger plants and as a part of a smart city IoT network, as the infrastructure often is already present due to utility meter reading systems. 868 MHz are widely used for reading household meters in Neighbourhood Area Networks (NAN), while 169 MHz with its much larger coverage due to the ultra-narrowband technology are used for gas and water meters in LPWAN networks. The sensor interface modules are an extension of Radiocrafts’ sensor-to-cloud offering. The first
step was the demo done with the MPC1 module (Wireless M-Bus pulse counter) and the IOT Expansion Board (IEB), together with an FX-30 Gateway from Sierra Wireless connecting to an Amazon Web server.

Radiocrafts is leading provider of Wireless M-Bus modules, taking active part in the development of the standard in CEN. Radiocrafts has millions of RF modules in the field, used in utility metering and industrial applications. The compact surface mount modules, which measure only 12.7 x 25.4 mm, are delivered in tape and reel packaging. Samples and Developments Kits are available now.