IoT application development is critical to the deployment of sophisticated services – QuecOpen help to do this at speed

There’s a development race underway in IoT as companies look to bring new IoT products and services to market. It’s not just a race to be first but also a race to bring the richest features, the greatest functionality and the easiest design and development process to customers’ devices. This must be done against the clock but also taking into account cost constraints and other factors such as power consumption of the completed device.

Application development with a cellular IoT module processor enables end users to add functionality to their own devices that run alongside standard Quectel module processes. The Quectel EC25, for example, is a series of LTE Cat 4 modules that have been optimized for M2M and IoT applications. Offering maximum data rates up to 150Mbps downlink and 50Mbps uplink, the EC25 series offers a compact and unified form factor and is suitable for worldwide deployments.

Using QuecOpen for IoT application development

The module provides a foundation of performance for developers to build on and, by utilizing QuecOpen, an open source embedded development platform based on Linux, users can simplify the design and development process for IoT applications. The benefits of this approach include gaining access to a powerful platform that can transparently manage all LTE-related activities to allow developers to natively execute C, C++ and shell script-based programs on the processor and in the memory of Quectel modules.

In addition, the QuecOpen software developer kit (SDK) provides a rich library of examples which developers can use to realize rapid development. By downloading the embedded applications to Quectel module to run, it is now possible to remove an external host process, memory and range of product-specific ASICs such as IO expanders, audio DSPs and many other analogue and digital devices.

QuecOpen is applicable to a vast array of IoT devices and use cases such as telematics and transport, security, industry, energy, smart cities, life and healthcare, payments, gateways, and agriculture and the environment. The development platform is comprised of a series of development suites which include development documentation, the compilation environment, the SDK, drivers for Windows and Ubuntu. In addition, QuecOpen has a portfolio of tools that customers can download plus utilities such as the QCOM serial tool and QLOG, an assistant tool. An open kernel source is also an option.

These issues were explored in a recent Quectel Masterclass titled ‘QuecOpen: Application development using a cellular module processor’. The Masterclass detailed the development and environmental setup that QuecOpen facilitates and provided examples of how the platform is used for UART communication and to power a TCP demo. To view the Masterclass, visit: https://quectel-development.oriel-agency.dev/masterclass-library/application-development-module-processor