Siren Marine Inc. has selected Quectel Wireless Solutions to provide its BG96 and BG95 modules for variants of its boat monitoring and tracking products. Customers are typically boat owners and fleet managers who want to monitor the state of their vessel. A phone app or web interface allows customers to monitor and control various systems on the boat as well as track the boat location and enable geofences around the boat. Abnormal conditions including breach of security are signalled to the customer through push notifications.

Offering an extensive set of boat monitoring and tracking features with the easy-to-use app, the Siren 3 or Siren 3 Pro ‘black box’ installed in the boat, is capable of interfacing to a number of different sensors and subsystems, including engines. The Siren Marine products give customers peace of mind and helps prevent boat or equipment theft. It helps warn of impending failures when engines throw fault codes or if other abnormal system activity is detected. It can also notify the owner when a boat is taking on water which allows intervention before the boat sinks.

The combination of multi-band support, module cost, integral GNSS, 2G fallback and low power consumption makes the BG95, along with an external Quectel L76 GNSS module, an attractive solution for Siren Marine.

“In our upcoming Siren 3 Product, we’ve decided to stay with Quectel and utilize the BG95-S5 given its non-terrestrial networks (NTN) capability,” says Alex Joseph, Senior Engineering Manager at Siren Marine.

“Quectel continues to offer competitive pricing,” adds Joseph. “In the new Siren 3 product, we’ve added an additional Quectel module for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) capability using the Quectel FC41D Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 5.2 module.”

Quectel is proud to be helping Siren Marine to enable boat owners to keep their assets safe through their boat monitoring and tracking solutions. “We’re excited to be supplying our BG95, L76 and FC41D modules to Siren Marine as it broadens its portfolio of solutions for the boating community,” comments Natasha Barrios, Vice President, Sales – North America at Quectel Wireless Solutions. “Boats are valuable assets that owners want to keep safe while they’re away so being able to deploy solutions like the Siren 3 and Siren 3 Pro provides a cost-effective way to ensure their boats are secure and ready for their next voyage.”

Key challenges with the Siren 3 Pro included achieving low cost, compact size and minimizing power consumption. The Quectel modules have helped achieve those goals. The Quectel QNavigator diagnostic tool proved to be a valuable tool during development for debugging and verification.

“Quectel was a pleasant surprise for us,” concludes Joseph. “When I first designed a Quectel cellular module into our product in 2018, I was somewhat unfamiliar with the company, but I liked the features that the module offered along with the price point. Six years on, I must say that my concerns were unfounded, the modules have worked as expected but more importantly, the engineering support and communication from Quectel has been outstanding. The latter is a rare commodity in this space. Based on our experience, we continue to design Quectel parts into new designs. They remain very competitive, packing industry leading features into products on their roadmap.”

The Quectel BG95 is a series of multi-mode low power wide area (LPWA) modules that offers maximum data rates of 588Kbps downlink and 1119Kbps uplink over LTE Cat M1. With a cost-effective SMT form factor of 23.6mm x 19.9mm x 2.2mm, the BG95 enables integrators and developers to easily design their applications.

The Quectel L76 is an extremely compact GNSS module that provides simultaneous GPS, GLONASS, Galileo, BDS and QZSS open service L1 reception. Measuring just 10.1mm x 9.7mm x 2.3mm, the module offers very low power consumption, making it ideal for the Siren 3 and Siren 3 Pro.