Qwiic Iridium 9603N

With a clear view of the sky, the Qwiic Iridium 9603 allows you to send and receive short messages. It works anywhere in the world, far beyond the reach of WiFi and GSM networks. Maybe you want to transmit weather information from a weather station on top of a mountain? Or use it to send data from a travelling balloon sat? Perhaps you need to communicate in an emergency, when other networks might not be available?

At the heart of our product is an Iridium 9603 modem. The Qwiic module hosts the 9603 and provides it with an antenna, and its power supply requirements. The modem’s serial interface is translated into I2C commands by the ATtiny84 microcontroller.

Sending and receiving messages to the Iridium network is as easy as sending I2C commands from your RedBoard over a Qwiic connector. The Arduino library walks you through sending messages to the Iridium network using your Qwiic Iridium 9603. An online portal allows you to send messages from the Iridium satellite network to your modem.

The Qwiic Iridium design is largely based on the RockBLOCK 9603 and was invented by Professor Paul Clark. Professor Clark also wrote the complete I2C library. For now, we don’t have the licensing to sell this board along with the modem. So you need to buy a RockBLOCK 9603 to get the Iridium modem and Maxtena Iridium antenna for a full transceiver system.

Note: The Iridium modem does require a monthly rental service to exchange information with the Iridium satellite network. You only pay for months in which you wish to use the modem. No annual contract is required. Line rental costs £12GBP (about $15USD) per month and includes access to the RockBLOCK management system for managing your devices. The billing system is built-in, and allows you to pay for only what you use. Airtime for Iridium modems must be purchased from Rock Seven via the admin portal once the units are registered. You cannot use the devices with another Iridium airtime provider by default. If you would like to use it with another provider, you will need to pay an unlock fee of $60USD per modem.

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