The ARDUINO MKR FOX 1200 provides a practical and cost-effective solution for adding Sigfox connectivity to projects that require low power. This open source board can be connected to Arduino Create for programming and to the existing Sigfox infrastructure with its extensive European coverage for data collection. The Sigfox infrastructure runs 24/7 without you having to do anything to maintain it and you can always check its status.
ARDUINO MKR FOX 1200 gives you an amazing out-of-the-box experience when implementing IoT projects of any size: from a single sensor monitoring the temperature in your home, to an industrial deployment covering the entire factory outdoors. The board's main processor is a low-power 32-bit Arm® Cortex®-M0 SAMD21, as in the other boards in the Arduino MKR family. Sigfox connectivity is performed with a module from Microchip®, the Smart RF ATA8520, a low-power chipset operating in the 868 MHz range. In this case, no additional cryptographic chip is required, as the Sigfox network offers its own end-to-end security.
These features make it a great IoT node and building block for low-power wide-area IoT devices within the Sigfox infrastructure.
Arduino has partnered with Sigfox to bring you an easy way to connect devices to the Cloud with zero infrastructure investment. Each ARDUINO MKR FOX 1200 comes with a free one-year subscription to Sigfox's data plan, useful for testing the Sigfox network. Please check the terms of the plan in terms of messages per day on the Sigfox website. When it comes to coverage, Sigfox covers a large percentage of European soil.
Check this page on the Sigfox website to see if your planned application area is covered.
Its USB port can be used to provide power (5V) to the board. It has a screw connector where you can plug in a 3V battery pack. The board consumes so little that it runs on two 1.5V AA or AAA type batteries for a really long time.
If you're still deciding on the right wireless protocol for your solution, Arduino's MKR family has some alternatives to offer:
MKR WAN 1310: if you want to experiment with LoRa® or LoRaWAN ? Read more here. We also have a LoRa® gateway if you are thinking of building your own infrastructure.
MKR GSM 1400: if you look at global coverage, GSM / 3G is the most extensive network in the world.
MKR NB 1500: if your solution is designed around narrowband IoT.
