Webinar Summary
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In the fast-paced world of IoT product development, turning a concept into a working prototype, and eventually a scalable product, can be riddled with challenges. From choosing the right components to ensuring seamless wireless connectivity while managing bill of materials (BOM) costs, the process is complex and time-consuming. That's where the powerful combination of CELUS's AI-driven design platform and Blues's innovative wireless connectivity solutions comes into play.
This article dives into how these two technologies work together to streamline embedded product design, helping developers move from prototype to production faster and smarter.
Understanding the Challenge: Scaling Wireless IoT Designs
At the heart of many IoT projects is a prototype built with off-the-shelf hardware—development or carrier boards paired with wireless modules such as Blues's Notecards. While this approach is ideal for early-stage development, scaling to tens or thousands of devices quickly reveals its limitations.
- Cost Constraints: Prototyping hardware like Blues's Notecarriers (development boards) can be feature-rich but expensive at scale.
- Size and Integration: Many prototyping boards are too large or not optimized to fit into final product enclosures.
- Customization Needs: Off-the-shelf boards may not meet all specific design requirements, pushing developers to create custom carriers.
To address these issues, Blues offers smaller, cost-effective options like the Notecarrier XM, priced at just $5, featuring castellated edges for easy embedding in products. Moreover, all Blues Notecarrier designs are open-source, providing schematic files to build custom carriers tailored to your project's needs.
However, designing custom hardware is inherently complex and debugging remote hardware issues can be a major headache. While Blues provides a free design consultation service called Min Spin for large-scale projects (10,000+ units), this isn't always accessible for smaller teams or mid-sized projects.
The Blues Ecosystem: Simplifying Wireless Connectivity
Before exploring the CELUS platform, it's important to understand the Blues ecosystem, which is designed to simplify cellular connectivity for IoT products.
- Blues Notecard: The core hardware providing wireless connectivity. It's more than just a modem—it's a standalone cellular module with integrated circuitry designed for easy cloud enablement.
- Global Reach & Prepaid Service: Blues Notecards come with prepaid data (500 MB) and 10 years of service, with no monthly SIM fees. They support global cellular connectivity and various radio types.
- Notecarriers: Development boards that interface between your host microcontroller (MCU) and the Notecard.
- Notehub Cloud Service: Blues's cloud platform that securely connects Notecards to your cloud application, enabling bidirectional data flow with minimal setup.
- Unified API: Regardless of the Notecard model or radio technology, developers interact through a consistent API, enabling mixed deployments with one firmware.
This seamless integration allows developers to focus on building their applications rather than wrestling with complex cellular connectivity.
Introducing CELUS: AI-Driven Embedded Design Automation
CELUS is an innovative, cloud-based design platform that automates schematic capture, part selection, and PCB layout—tasks that traditionally take days or weeks—compressing them into minutes. The platform supports popular electronic design automation (EDA) tools such as Altium, Fusion 360, and KiCad, providing flexible output options for your workflow.
Best of all, CELUS is free to use. Simply register at celus.io and start designing immediately, without any software installation.
Key Features of CELUS Platform
- Feature Projects: Pre-built project templates and functional blocks to jump start your design, including Blues Notecard/Notecarrier options.
- Design Canvas: A visual interface to build your project architecture by adding, removing, or customizing functional blocks.
- Preferred Manufacturer Selection: Specify preferred manufacturers such as Blues or NXP to tailor part selection.
- Automated Part Selection and Connectivity: The AI-powered “resolve” function finds compatible components and automatically creates the necessary electrical connections between blocks like microcontrollers, sensors, and Notecards.
- Comprehensive Output Files: Downloadable PDFs with project summaries, detailed Bill of Materials (BOM) in CSV format, and project packages ready for your chosen EDA tool.
How CELUS Works with Blues Content
By filtering for Blues content within CELUS, you can access all available Notecard and Notecarrier options, including the cost-effective XP versions optimized for scalable product design. The platform provides:
- Schematics and layouts with pre-placed components designed by expert electronics engineers.
- Detailed datasheets accessible directly within the platform.
- Easy locking of selected parts to finalize your design choices.
This integration saves valuable time by handling the initial design steps, allowing you to focus on refining your board shape and routing.
Customizing Your Design: Adding Microcontrollers, Sensors, and More
CELUS's intuitive drag-and-drop interface lets you add microcontrollers, sensors, LEDs, or any other components to your project. For example, adding a temperature sensor involves simply selecting the component and placing it on the canvas. The platform's AI assistant helps establish appropriate connections, such as I2C interfaces between the MCU and sensor, ensuring everything is electrically compatible.
You can also specify preferred manufacturers for microcontrollers or sensors, and CELUS will tailor the part selection accordingly. If you want to override default connections or power supplies, the platform allows manual adjustments to ensure your design meets your exact specifications.
Additionally, CELUS supports multiple languages for input, making it accessible globally.
Limitations and Future Improvements
Currently, CELUS content is created and curated by a dedicated team of electronics engineers rather than being AI-generated from scratch. This ensures high-quality, verified design blocks but means that some specialized components—like certain FPGAs or less common chips—may have limited availability.
The platform does not yet support uploading existing schematics for modification; instead, it focuses on providing verified content to maintain design integrity. However, exported project files can be further edited in your preferred EDA tool.
CELUS and Blues are continuously improving the platform to expand its content library and capabilities.
Getting Started and Support Resources
For beginners, it's recommended to first familiarize yourself with Blues and CELUS separately. Blues offers a variety of starter kits and step-by-step tutorials to help you get up to speed with their wireless modules and cloud services.
CELUS provides a knowledge base, tutorial videos, and a supportive community to guide you through using the platform. Webinars like this one also offer detailed walkthroughs and practical examples.
If you find a Blues product or SKU missing from CELUS, don't hesitate to reach out to Blues for feedback. They are eager to expand and refine their integration based on user input.
Conclusion: A Powerful Duo for IoT Product Development
Combining Blues's robust, prepaid cellular connectivity modules with CELUS's AI-driven design automation offers IoT developers a streamlined path from concept to scalable product. By leveraging CELUS's rapid schematic and PCB layout generation alongside Blues's versatile Notecards and cloud services, teams can save time, reduce costly design errors, and accelerate their product development cycles.
Whether you're scaling up from a prototype or designing a custom board from scratch, this integrated approach empowers you to design faster and connect smarter—unlocking your next great embedded product.
Ready to dive in? Explore CELUS at celus.io and learn more about Blues at dev.blues.com to start your journey today.
