Review: Hands On With The Swarm Satellite Network Eval Kit

Arthur T Knackerbracket has processed the following story:

If you have devices out in the field, you probably want to connect with them. There was a time when that was hard to do, requiring telephone wires or specialized radio gear. Now cellular data is prevalent, but even cellular isn't everywhere. If you have the cash, you can pay a number of satellite companies to carry your data, but that's generally pricey and has its own challenges.

The age of satellite constellations is changing that. Of course everyone by now has heard of Starlink which is offering satellite internet via numerous satellites that are much smaller than traditional telecom satellites. But they're not the only came[sic] in town.

A company called Swarm has put up a constellation of 1/4U cube satellites in low orbits. They offer a ground station that uses an omni antenna and a subscription access program for small amounts of data. They sent us a unit to review, and while I haven't used the system in a real project yet, the kit was pretty impressive.

The Swarm tile" is a tiny radio that can talk bi-directionally with small satellites in low Earth orbit. The little unit is made to mount on a PCB, can control its power consumption, and talks to your system via a standard 3.3V UART connection. It does, however, require a small antenna and maybe even a smaller antenna for its GPS module. Small, in this case, is about a mid-size handy talkie antenna. There is a half-wave antenna that doesn't need a ground plane and a shorter antenna that does need a ground plane.

Read more of this story at SoylentNews.