u-blox XPLR-AOA-1 Explorer Kit

u-blox XPLR-AOA-1 Explorer Kit is designed to evaluate and experiment with the BLUETOOTH^® 5.1 direction finding feature. The Explorer Kit includes a C211 antenna board with NINA-B411 Bluetooth LE module, a C209 tag with NINA-B406 Bluetooth LE module, and u-connectLocate direction-finding software. The XPLR-AOA-1 explorer kit uses the antenna board (C211) and the tag (C209) along with the necessary software to leverage the Angle-of-Arrival (AoA) technology in any specific application. An anchor point containing an antenna array that is connected to a Bluetooth receiver can utilize the AoA technology. This helps in detecting the direction, or angle, of a moving tag transmitting a signal with an appended Constant Tone Extension (CTE). This explorer kit calculates the angle using the u-connectLocate software that runs on the embedded MCU in NINA-B411.

The u-blox XPLR-AOA-1 Explorer Kit can be used to detect if an object is approaching a door and keep track of goods passing through a gate. Other applications include avoiding collisions between automated guided vehicles or letting a camera follow an asset moving in a room.

Features

Out-of-the-box Bluetooth^® AoA explorer kit
High-resolution angle calculation in two dimensions
Antenna board with an array of 5 dual-polarized antennas
Tag with Bluetooth transmitter
u-connectLocate with embedded angle calculation
5° mean error angle accuracy

Evaluation of Bluetooth 5.1 direction-finding using angle-of-arrival
40 updates per second update rate
2-dimensional angle calculation supported
USB interface to connect to a PC or other host system
LED array visualizing the angle

Kit Contents

C211 antenna board with NINA-B411 Bluetooth LE module
C209 tag with NINA-B406 Bluetooth LE module

u-connectLocate direction finding software (from u-blox.com)
C209 tag software example (from Github)

Overview

Videos

Resources

Datasheet
User Guide
Blog Post: Bluetooth Indoor Positioning