Particle, a company that makes development kits for wireless Internet of Things applications—formerly known as Spark Devices—is preparing to ship a new board-based computer that will allow developers to use Arduino code to build mobile wireless devices based on GSM cellular connections. The Electron will allow developers to build Internet of Things devices that can connect nearly anywhere in the world where there's a 2G or 3G mobile wireless network.

Electron is the followup to Particle's Photon, a Wi-Fi based device with similar capabilities. Both Photon and Electron can use Arduino "sketch" code or code written in Particle's own development tool. And Particle offers a cloud service that allows developers to scale up their devices to full-production deployments of more than 100,000 devices.

Part of the appeal (and the business model) for Electron is that it comes with its own global data plan. Using an IoT SIM that works on cellular networks in over 100 countries, the Electron's basic data plan starts at $2.99 per month for 1 megabyte of data and 99 cents for each additional megabyte. That's not a lot of data, but Electron is intended mostly for "machine to machine" (M2M) applications, where relatively small messages are sent between the device and the cloud—not for things like streaming video or more consumer-type broadband cellular applications.

In addition to using Wiring, the same application framework used by Arduino "sketches," developers can write code for Electron in C, C++, or ARM assembly code to get closer to the metal. There's also Particle.js, an implementation of the Node.js JavaScript framework that runs on Electron and the other Particle hardware tools. Particle provides the Particle Build Web-based integrated development environment (IDE) and Particle Dev (based on Github's Atom text editor). There's also Tinker, a mobile application that provides basic remote access to the Electron's input and output, as well as some remote control, without writing code—and a full mobile software developer kit for building more full-featured mobile applications to connect to mobile devices. There's also a full REST-based API for connecting Web and cloud applications to Electron devices.

The Electron's computer-on-a-board includes Arduino-like interfaces for connecting sensors and other electronic hardware, a u-blox cellular module, onboard lithium battery and cellular antenna, and an ARM Cortex M3 processor with 1 megabyte of flash storage and 128 kilobytes of RAM.

A 2G cellular version of Electron will sell for $39; Particle is offering a 3G version for $59. Particle is currently shipping to customers who participated in the Electron's Kickstarter program, and the company should begin to ship other pre-orders later this month.

We're hoping to do a hands-on review of the Electron later this month as we dive deeper into other wireless IoT development kits—including the Simblee and other Bluetooth-based Arduino-like boards. Obviously, we'll want to take a look at the security features of Electron's back end—with a focus on the 2G version, given the flaws that have been exploited in 2G GSM networks. Additionally, there's a very similar offering to the Electron from Konekt, called the Dash, which will also soon be shipping.