About ESPnarrow
ESPnarrow is an open-source project designed to make it easy and affordable for companies to explore NB-IoT and LTE-M technologies for their own IoT applications. The project provides a compact gateway based on the ESP32-S3 platform and equipped with an NB-IoT/LTE-M eSIM connection.
Built for industrial devices and sensors
The hardware includes the typical interfaces required to connect industrial devices and sensors.
The goal of ESPnarrow is to provide a simple and practical platform for evaluating cellular IoT communication without the need to develop dedicated hardware and software from scratch.
Hardware and Software
The gateway firmware is based on the Arduino platform and is provided under an open-source license. A basic reference implementation demonstrates how sensor or test data can be transmitted via MQTT over NB-IoT or LTE-M to a server running Node-RED.
The accompanying web portal provides an overview of the connected gateways and allows users to:
- Monitor the current gateway status
- View mobile data usage
- Display transmitted payload data
- Remotely reset the gateway
- Perform firmware updates over the air (OTA)
The project is intentionally kept simple so that developers can quickly understand the communication workflow and adapt the hardware and software to their own applications.
Who is ESPnarrow for?
ESPnarrow is aimed primarily at companies, developers and engineering teams that want to evaluate NB-IoT or LTE-M for their own IoT projects using inexpensive and easily accessible hardware. Instead of starting with a complete custom development, ESPnarrow provides a ready-to-use hardware platform together with example software and a basic server infrastructure.
This makes it possible to quickly gain practical experience with topics such as:
- NB-IoT and LTE-M network connectivity
- MQTT communication
- eSIM-based IoT connectivity
- Data consumption
- Remote device management
- Over-the-air firmware updates
- Connecting industrial devices via serial or CAN interfaces
Our objective is to provide an easy entry point into cellular IoT technology and enable users to quickly evaluate its capabilities, limitations and suitability for their own applications.
Open Source
The ESPnarrow software and project resources are available on GitLab under a free and open-source license. ESPnarrow PCBs and assembled hardware can be obtained from ELFIN Technology GmbH.
For questions, hardware requests or if you are interested in participating in the project, please contact us.