The Internet of Things (IoT) is evolving at a rapid pace, but there is one problem slowing its progression: low cost flexible development hardware. Current prototyping hardware is cost prohibitive given how integral it is to designing IoT products. In order to unleash the full potential IoT has to offer, it is essential to offer hardware at a lower cost to give access to a wider audience of developers. This is where PUREmodules comes in! We have simplified our hardware to the basic components and by doing so minimized cost and complexity.

What are PUREmodules?

PUREmodules are the building blocks for IoT connected smart sensors. PUREmodules help you bring your vision to life. With PUREmodules, there is never any need to solder, breadboard, or wire anything. PUREmodules are quick to assemble and enable you to easily try out your ideas. Once you have the PUREmodules you need, simply snap them together, use our sample code, or DIY and write your own, and you are good to go! PUREmodules will simplify IoT development on a massive scale and set this technology loose on the world in a way that up until now has been impossible.

Why should you support our Kickstarter?

What is currently on the market, are systems that are hard to assemble, messy, and difficult to work with. What we are offering you with PUREmodules is a system that is clean, compact, elegant, simple, and quick. Sounds great right? Here’s where we need your help. Building hardware inexpensively requires volume. We intend to keep our costs as low as possible while maintaining the goal of making our hardware in USA. PUREmodules have been prototyped and tested and we ready to go to production. A successful kickstarter will help us break the cost barrier to be able to price our modules inline with the mass production costs of other electronics.

More about PUREmodules

COREmodule

The Core Module is the brain of the system. For your support of this kickstarter one of the rewards is that you will receive the nRF52 Core Module. We selected the nRF52832 SOC for a number of reasons. First, is because of it’s compatibility with Arduino and a number of other open source frameworks. We know many of you love Arduino for its simplicity and power, and so do we. We will be providing support for Contiki OS and Arduino for this kickstarter release. What’s also great about the nRF52832 SOC is it supports the following major IoT operating systems:

Additional Software frameworks supported

Hardware Features

nRF52832 SOC

Onboard Antenna

Internal Temperature Sensor

LIS2DE12TR Accelerometer

1225 Coin Cell holder

2.4Ghz Antenna

One While LED

Two User buttons

Three output expansion ports, two I2C and one SPI

Two input expansion ports, one I2C and one SPI

Shipping with BLE bootloader.

Update firmware over the Air.

Optional JTAG programming connection via Tag-Connect

One of the I2C expansion ports has JTAG and NFC expansion options

Total of 20 GPIO is available

Applications

There are endless applications with the nRF52 Core module, but a few common applications include:

BLE Beacon for Asset tracking

BLE packet sniffer

iBeacon and Eddystone beacons

Motion controller BLE mouse

Fitness step counter with BLE interface

SUPER SENSOR Module

In addition to the COREmodule we are also kickstarting a multi function sensor module to enable a maximum number of uses in conjunction with the Core module. We call this our SUPER SENSOR module. The SUPER SENSOR Module contains 7 sensors capable of measuring the following data:

BAROMETRIC PRESSURE

HUMIDITY

TEMPERATURE

ACCELEROMETER

MAGNETOMETER

DISTANCE

UVA UVB

RGB

IR

HEART RATE PULSE OXIMETRY

We are targeting three key areas with our multi-sensor module: (1) home automation and monitoring, (2) health tracking, and (3) industrial measurement.

Home Automation and Monitoring

Within home automation a number of applications are possible. Some possibilities include: weather station, water leak detection, motion sensing, appliance monitoring, intrusion detection and pet monitoring. We are even more excited to see what you come up with. The possibilities are endless.

Health Tracking Applications

Options include: pulse rate oximetry, motion, fitness, sunscreen application alerts, sleep quantity measurements, and stress detection. Again we think this is only the beginning and can't wait to see applications that are created.

Industrial Measurement applications

Server monitoring, equipment utilization, asset tracking, and farming. Overall we think that the starting set of sensors we are going to have will enable hundreds of different applications. We will continue to develop new sensor modules and refine the ones we have.

Other Modules

To give you a better understanding of the size and scope of this undertaking we want you to know that we have designed over 40 other compatible modules. We have selected two of the best to begin with for this Kickstarter campaign. After we have successfully gone into production with the COREmodule and SUPER SENSOR module we will take more of our modules into production. Here is a list of some that are already designed:

General Purpose IO modules via I2C Expanders

I2C ADC and DAC modules

Energy Harvesting Modules

Low power chemical Sensors

PIN diode Radiation Detector Module

I2C thermal camera modules

Dual I2C DC motor Module

GPS and IMU Module

Long Range LoRa RF modules (10+ miles)

Li-Ion and other Power modules

Ethernet Module

Low Power LCD module

User IO button and LED modules

Multiple Core modules; CC2650, EFM32, ESP32 and more.

Adapter modules to other sensor systems such as Grove and LittleBits

Adapters to popular platforms such as Arduino and Raspberry Pi.

Why did we make PUREmodules

Our team, after creating hundreds of designs began to see a pattern emerge. Most hardware is built with same core components with slight variations between them. By breaking up the design into logical blocks we saw a pattern of a Core processor, sensors and IO. We found by making reusable modules we could make prototype designs very rapidly. We want to share our building blocks with you and the rest of the world.

Schedule

We plan to order pre production hardware beginning December and have the first batch of 100 units by late January ready to ship out to all Early birds. After this round all issues should be worked out for a larger run of 1000+ units. Late January we will start the boards for production. This should be ready to ship by early March where all the backers will start to receive their hardware. We will release schematics of the designs when the hardware ships.

Timeline

Stretch goals

We have some great ideas for stretch goals for this project, they will be announced as we progress in this campaign, so please share this projects with others you think will be interested.







