Page 107 - OmniSite Anniversary Book

OUR PRODUCTS
4. 5. 6.
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Aug 2002
Sony GR48
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April 2004
Sony GR48 Radio Carrier PCB
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Sony GR48
4. After successfully deploying the Skybility CMM8920, we heard Sony entered the M2M cellular analog radio market. At the time we thought, Wow, nally a quality company is supplying radios! Let’s change to Sony and get away from Skybility, who keeps changing its designs.
The design (seen here) is Sony’s entrant into the M2M space. Unfortunately, before we could ever complete this design, the FCC announced it would allow cellular carriers to discontinue support of the analog cellular spectrum. So we discontinued work on this design and then jumped to a new one that used the (then) latest 1G Digital radios. These promised to work better and add stability to the cellular M2M market.
5. With the news of the cellular analog Sunset in hand, OmniSite quickly moved to design a new radio carrier board around the new Sony GR48 digital radio.
Since both the analog and digital radios used our radio carrier board, we could upgrade products in the eld by sending the new digital radio (mounted on a radio carrier board) along with new rmware for our products.
Sure enough, the GR48 worked better than the older analog radios, and we now had a new 1G digital cellular design.
When we changed from analog to digital radios, we also transitioned away from Aeris.net to Kore Telematics, who o ered more price-competitive cellular rates.
6. As the cellular analog Sunset was hitting us hard, we made a version of the Sony GR48 radio carrier PCB that could drop in replacement for the analog CMM-8700 radios. Unfortunately, we were never able to deploy this solution to the eld, be- cause we decided to completely retire the analog versions of the original XR50 and Crystal Ball due to the low ability of the primary microcontroller used in the designs.
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Radio Carrier Board for GR48
Pairs with the Sony GR48 Radio
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