The days that Arduino was equivalent to Arduino Uno are long gone. Today Arduino is a continuously expanding family of boards that closely follow trends in electronics. The MKR branch of the Arduino board family is dedicated to the Internet of Things (IoT) and as such tries to provide solutions for emerging standards and technologies. Two new boards in the MKR family, the MKR WiFi 1010 and MKR NB 1500, once again give the application designer more options to consider.

The MKR WiFi 1010 is an update or upgrade of the existing Arduino MKR1000. Basically this module replaces the wireless part of the MKR1000’s ATSAMW25 SoC, the WINC1500, by an ESP32-based module from u-blox. The SAMD21 ARM Cortex-M0+ controller and ECC508 CryptoAuthentication chip of the MKR1000 have been retained, keeping the “1010” downwards compatible with the “1000” as the “1010” features Bluetooth too.

The second board, the MKR NB 1500, has the same MKR1000 Arduino-compatible front end but replaces the Wi-Fi module by a narrowband IoT (NB-IoT) module, also from u-blox. This board is designed to work over cellular/LTE networks and supports transmissions via AT&T, T-Mobile USA, Telstra, Verizon over the Cat M1/NB1 deployed bands 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 20 and 28.

Both the MKR WiFi 1010 and the MKR NB 1500 are said to be available in June 2018.