Hardware Projects » mPCIe WWAN modem USB breakout board

We've received the first mass-produced batch of version 3 of the mPCIE WWAN modem breakout boards.

Changes from the previous version 2:

• single-sided board with SIM slot moved to the top
• added drill holes for simplified mounting of the board
• added three SMA jacks (and U.FL jacks, and U.FL jumper wires) to use SMA-attached RF cabling/antennas with proper strain relief as opposed to a clumsy pigtail

As usual, all design files are published under CC-BY-SA at http://git.osmocom.org/osmo-small-hardware/tree/mpcie-breakout

Pre-manufactured/assembled boards are in stock and available as a kit with all related accessories from the sysmocom webshop

There are plenty of cellular modems on the market in the mPCIe form factor.

Playing with such modems is reasonably easy, you can simply insert them in a mPCIe
slot of a laptop or an embedded device (soekris, pc-engines or the like).

However, many of those modems actually export interesting singals like digital PCM
audio or UART ports on some of the mPCIe pins, both in standard and in non-standard ways.
Those signals are inaccessible in those embedded devices or in your laptop.

So I built a small break-out board which performs the basic function of exposing the mPCIe
USB signals on a USB mini-B socket, providing power supply to the mPCIe modem, offering a
SIM card slot at the bottom, and exposing all additional pins of the mPCIe header on a
standard 2.54mm pitch header for further experimentation.

The design of the board (including schematics and PCB layout design files) is available
as open hardware under CC-BY-SA license terms. For more information see mpcie-breakout.

If you don't want to build your own board, fully assembled and tested boards are available
via sysmocom