Questions Regarding Notehub and Cellular Notecard Devices

Hardware
1

  1. What antennas are certified to work with the module? Is there a list of FCC compatible antennas online? As far as I understand, when a device is FCC certified, it is usually certified alongside the antenna that was used during certification; therefore if another antenna is used with an FCC certified device (that was not used during certification) there may be issues around that.

  2. Is it possible to attach meta-data with firmware versions for notecard products; such that i can define the inputs/outputs of a device’s firmware for my frontend to dynamically generate UI widgets from? For example, let’s say my device is capable of turning something on and off, when my customer goes to manage that device, it should be able to use that information to generate the corresponding switch / toggle UI. Basically, i would like to have the firmware serve as the source of truth regarding the device’s capabilities, so all I have to do is focus on firmware, and the frontend will dynamically generate the proper units of measurements (for sensor readings), and generate the proper UI widgets for inputs (with proper limits, like -10 to 20, or maximum string input length, floating point input vs integer input, etc.)

The primary reason behind this is such that I can use the same IoT infrastructure and frontend code I already built for one customer, but rinse and repeat that same logic for all other customers within different industry domains, without having to manage multiple UI frontends and frameworks. This will allow me to scale much easier with Blues and use it for far more applications.

2

Hey @NicolasMontoya,

We’re asking about the antenna question internally. In the meantime I’ll address your second question.

Is it possible to attach meta-data with firmware versions for notecard products; such that i can define the inputs/outputs of a device’s firmware for my frontend to dynamically generate UI widgets from? For example, let’s say my device is capable of turning something on and off, when my customer goes to manage that device, it should be able to use that information to generate the corresponding switch / toggle UI. Basically, i would like to have the firmware serve as the source of truth regarding the device’s capabilities, so all I have to do is focus on firmware, and the frontend will dynamically generate the proper units of measurements (for sensor readings), and generate the proper UI widgets for inputs (with proper limits, like -10 to 20, or maximum string input length, floating point input vs integer input, etc.)

There are a few different ways you can approach something like this. The two primary ways the Notecard can communicate with its cloud backend, Notehub, are through Notes and environment variables.

Based off your description, you might want to try out environment variables as a way of storing the capabilities of a device. Your firmware can set the variables on devices, or you can set them in the cloud using the Notehub API.

And regardless of where you set the variables, you can use the Notehub API in your frontend to retrieve the variables and build out your UI.

We’ve used this sort of approach in some of the sample web apps I’ve helped build at Blues. For example, this accelerator has a web app that reads/writes environment variables: Indoor Floor-Level Tracker - Accelerators - Blues Developers.

TJ