nanotron Technologies, the leader in easy-to-use solutions for location-awareness today announced delivery of the first units of its swarm bee ER Development Kit Plus (DK+) featuring the new swarm bee ER location-aware radio module. The suffix 'ER' stands for 'Enhanced Resolution' since the new module boasts 10 cm accuracy delivered using ultra-wide band (UWB) technology.
“The UWB module and the associated development kit will help ALL Decawave customers cutting time-to-market for their end-products by at least 12 months” commented Thomas Foerste, VP Sales and Marketing at nanotron. “3-7GHz RF expertise and low-level coding capabilities are no longer necessary for UWB solution development”.
The new swarm bee ER module features the standard swarm API – the common high-level software interface – is cutting development time and allows customers to easily migrate existing applications from the swarm bee LE Chirp module to UWB and vice-versa depending on the use-case requirements. Chirp radio technology supports long-range applications of several hundred meters with precision requirements of 1 meter while UWB technology allows for 10 cm precision in closer proximity of up to twenty meters.
The new swarm bee ER DK+ provides a proven software and hardware platform for application development and comprises of three DK+ boards, swarm PC tools, and a comprehensive data package to facilitate easy and rapid development of location-aware applications. Customers benefit from several swarm tools including a node configuration device (NCD) boosting productivity if large numbers of radio nodes require configuration as part of network maintenance. Additional development boards could be purchased separately if customers want to evaluate larger location-aware networks.
Both the swarm bee ER UWB module and the swarm bee ER DK+ UWB development kit start shipping in volume in July 2016.
