SparkFun IOTA - Satellite Communication Module (ARTIC R2)

Is your project linked to environmental protection, awareness or study, or to protecting human life? Perhaps you are developing a wildlife tracker, ocean buoy, environmental monitoring system or need to transfer emergency medical information? Do you need to be able to transmit and receive data _anywhere_? If so, this is the product for you! IOTA (Integrated Open-Source Transceiver for ARGOS) allows you to send and receive short bursts of data via the ARGOS satellite network, anywhere on Earth including the Polar regions.

The ARGOS system has been around for quite a while. It was created in 1978 by the French Space Agency (CNES), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA), originally as a scientific tool for collecting and relaying meteorological and oceanographic data around the world. Today, ARGOS is revolutionising satellite communication, adding a constellation of 25 nanosatellites to complement the 7 traditional satellites carrying ARGOS instrumentation. The first of these, ANGELS, is already in operation and SparkFun were among the first users to transmit data to ANGELS in October 2020. When the constellation is complete, there will be a maximum of 10-15 minutes between satellite passes.

Our transceiver shield has been tested and certified by Kinéis for ARGOS 2, 3 and 4 communication and IOTA uses the exact same RF design. Compared to other satellite communication systems, IOTA has a much lower current draw and will work with a very simple, very lightweight quarter-wave wire antenna. The ARTIC R2 chipset on IOTA operates from 3.3V and the on-board flash memory enables fast boot times. If you don’t need the full transmit power, or want to conserve your battery life, you can transmit at reduced power too thanks to the opto-isolated gain pin. The interface is 3.3V SPI and will work with a huge range of microcontrollers.

Our [Arduino Library](https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun_ARGOS_ARTIC_R2_Arduino_Library) makes it really easy to get up and running with ARGOS. We’ve provided a full set of examples which will let you: configure the ARTIC R2 chipset; predict the next satellite pass; receive allcast and individually-coded messages; transmit messages using ARGOS 2, 3 and 4 encoding.

You will find the Eagle symbol and footprint for IOTA in the [SparkFun Eagle Libraries](https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun-Eagle-Libraries) - [RF Library](https://github.com/sparkfun/SparkFun-Eagle-Libraries/blob/main/SparkFun-RF.lbr). Please see our [Eagle Library Installation Guide](https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/how-to-install-and-setup-eagle#using-the-sparkfun-libraries) if you have not used our libraries before..

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Incorrect Platform ID: We learned recently that some ARTIC R2 boards had been incorrectly programmed with the wrong Platform ID. Each board has two IDs: a decimal one which you use to access your data on ArgosWeb; and a hexadecimal one which is embedded in each satellite uplink message. These boards had been incorrectly programmed with the decimal ID instead of the hexadecimal one. You can tell if your board is affected by calling readPlatformID(). If the true hexadecimal ID is returned, all is well. If the value is the decimal ID - expressed in hexadecimal - then your board requires reprogramming as your messages will not be delivered. Please return your board. We will reprogram it and return it to you quickly. If your project is time-critical, please contact us via the SparkX forum and we will provide a software work-around. We apologise for the error and the inconvenience.

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