 Hi, I'm MPI. Hi, I'm MPI. I brought you by DigiKey and Adafruit. This week it is TE Lady Ada. What is I'm MPI this week? This week's I'm MPI is the TE Limbas LTE GNSS cellular modem. Looks like this will do Hickey. This is a handy little device that you can use to add cellular data connectivity and geolocation to a single board computer or it's like a desktop computer. Anything that has a USB port, LEMBOS as you will know because you're a fantasy fan is the elvish way bread that you only need to have a little bite to fill your stomach and is used by the hobbits as they travel through the forest. And so this is like LEMBOS, this cellular modem will help you find your way because it's a geolocation device. It's also very filling. Okay, so what is this? It's a USB modem. And if folks remember old-style modems that would connect through your RS232 port on your computer or your serial port and would tie into the phone line and then you could use it to dial up and get internet access. This is just like that, but there's no phone line. It uses a cellular modem inside and the access to the data comes through USB. So you just plug into USB port and it shows up as a serial device that then your operating system dials through and you need to have SIM cards. You do need to have a SIM card with data access. It does come with one that you can activate. And then you can get LTE speeds, which are actually pretty fast. And this is designed specifically for use with single board computers like the Raspberry Pi and the O-DRAW and the ASUS Tinker and NVIDIA Jets and Nano. Like for the very popular single board computers. But you can use kind of anything with Debian or Ubuntu. And of course it also does work with Mac or Windows or like non-wasbian style mixed development systems. So we opened one up and inside is a QuarkTel EC25. And this is a, this is the cellular and GNSS module. So, you know, we've covered QuarkTel before. They're experts at this. They make the modules. They get them certified. Set their legit to use on the network and their FCC and PTCRB and all that good stuff. Don't worry about the EMI. This is not going to be valid very soon. This is the LTE Cat4 modem. So, you know, you can get a fairly good data transfer up to 150 megabits per second down. 50 megabits up. So maybe not for like streaming a lot of video, but definitely good enough for data transfer, IoT projects, sending images back and forth, data chunks. And you have, you know, general purpose internet access that you need for your device. You know, you're used to Wi-Fi or Ethernet. You can now unplug and go anywhere without having to connect a hat or solder anything up to your Westway Pi. There's a couple different modules in this family. The reason you might want to know the module is because you want to use the AT command set directly. You can download it from the QuarkTel website. Not that this is the AFXD data only version. It just might be handy. And this does come with GNSS inside. So GPS, GLONASS, Baidu, Galileo and QZSS. Those are the different constellations available for tracking location around the world using the GPS satellite system. And, you know, even though, again, this is marketed towards single board computers, absolutely great for that. It'll also work with general purpose Windows, Linux or Mac. On the other side of the module, when you open it up, there is the USB-C connector on the right. And then there's this power supply chip. There is a SIM card. It comes with a SIM card that you can activate. It's data only. And of course, you'll have to pay because it's, you know, it's a monthly subscription service for a SIM card. While the SIM card does come with it, it is removable. It's just a micro SD, micro SIM. And so if you want to use your own SIM or, you know, you're going, you know, abroad or whatever and you want to use a different SIM card or like a SIM swapping system, you can just open it up. Once you open it, the warranty is void. But like I'm a hacker, so I like to know, like, you know, is it possible to change it? It's not a SIM. It's just a removable one. And what's interesting is in the top right there, that chip, the TE chip is, sorry, the TI chip is a USB hub. And that's interesting because inside it's actually two USB devices. Let me get to that in a moment. So on the front, there's some fun design decisions that they made. So I like to point them up. Once the activity LEDs make up a TE logo and it looks like really cool. There's little light pipes that go through. So, you know, the activity and the connectivity and power comes through these light pipes that, you know, it's like, oh, there's like a logo, but it's actually not. It's an indicator. Second, if you go back one, this, you can kind of see it's a little shiny. It's conformally coated, which is, which is nice. It's not, you know, waterproof or even weatherproof. But if you have to have, you know, have it outside and there's some humidity. You don't have to worry about as oxidizing as quickly. I didn't notice a nice conformal coat. So they, they spent a little bit extra effort to make sure that this board is protected for when you use it, say for digital signage that might have some exposure to the elements. Okay, and then get down when we did this one. So when you plug it in, you know, of course you can use it on your Raspberry Pi, but I thought it'd be more informative to have it plugged in on my Windows computer. It does come up with three ports. There's the AT port, which is where you can send AT command sets. If you're used to cellular modems, or pretty much any modem, you know that use AT commands to send or see data. So if you want to do direct control of the module, you can do it that way. The NMEA port is as you expect the GPS module and that kind of pipes out NMEA sentences. And then the DM port is for data transfer. I think that's for the high speed data transfer when you're trying to get that 150 megabits per second. You wouldn't necessarily use the AT command port. The other interesting thing that they did is as I mentioned that there is a USB hub chip in there. So that USB hub chip is used to allow you to connect to both the cellular mod cellular module modem, which gives you those three comports. And there's separately a USB key inside. It's a disk storage. And this actually solves a very annoying problem of, oh, wow, I want to put my device on the Internet, but I can't put my device on the Internet because the drivers will query and download them from the Internet. So how do I get them? If you remember that from like Wi-Fi modules, like before the drivers came with every operating system. But for cellular modules, especially for Raspberry Pi, the instructions for how to set them up are not built in. So this way, instead of you having to type in all these commands and, you know, and like memorize them, the SD card, sorry, the SD card, the USB key that comes inside the module as part of that like second hub connected USB key has the code and instructions and shell scripts for you to install the modem directly on an arm chip, like, you know, NVIDIA, OJORD or Raspberry Pi. So it's like you pop it in and you're like, it mounts automatically, you just run install, tinstall.sh and it does everything for you and you're like ready to go in under two minutes. Very fast. As mentioned, there is a built-in SIM card. You can provision the SIM by going to their SIM provider. And then of course, here's the instructions for that USB modem. Again, I was like, what do you mean it just auto mounts and then I realized, oh, it's a USB key inside. So that's kind of nice. And great for asset tracking, especially because it's got both cellular and it can drop down to GPRS or GSM, but has category four LTE, which is, you know, pretty much has almost complete coverage in the United States. The GPS is really good quality. So you can use that to locate devices and send their location over cellular. Or you can use it if you're like, you know, let's say you have a bunch of like not tracks, things are moving, but machines that you're tracking and you want them to report who they are. Sometimes it's like, you don't necessarily, they don't necessarily go out with the firmware that tells them, hey, this is your unique identifier. You can use the location instead. So for example, you know that you have a client, you know, in Augusta, Georgia, you don't necessarily know, like if they moved around, the GSS will tell you, hey, this is where your client is located. You can use that to identify the data instead of just relying on like the EMI or like a unique username or password. So I think useful for a lot of different products where you don't want to have to rely on Wi-Fi access because Wi-Fi passwords change all the time. And it is in stock at Digi. That's right. You can actually get them, which is pretty sweet. And the price is, you know, less expensive than if you try to like roll your own using the modules. So you get the SAM, you get the casing, you get the USB key storage, USB hub, power supply, everything's ready to go in this like adorable little case. Okay. Okay. And then we're going to play this video and then we'll see you on the other side for new products. Get Reliable Speeds with TE Connectivity's LEMBUS LTE GNSS USB Modem ran on an LTE CAT4 network with GPS tracking capabilities. From consumer products, industrial automation, engineering education, and maker projects, the LEMBUS LTE GNSS Modem prioritizes your next big IoT project. The LEMBUS is designed for use on a wide array of single board computers utilizing ARM chipsets and Linux OS. The LEMBUS also includes plug and play operations, making LTE and GPS connections ready after plugging in and a single command on terminal for easy installation. The LEMBUS has a built-in pod group SIM card, which can be activated using the pod group's website, enabling connection to the AT&T network, getting data connection subscription you can rely on. The device also functions as a portable USB drive, allowing for extra storage capabilities and convenient installation. Get a wide array of project design choices with flexible connection options and small device footprint capabilities, giving you the freedom of placement without obstructing adjacent USB ports. TE's LEMBUS LTE GNSS Modem is your convenient all-in-one package for your next big IoT project. The only limit is your imagination. It's ready to connect your world.