Pinnacle™ 100 Cellular Modem
Overview
Low-power cellular to Bluetooth 5 for IoT– Done.
The Pinnacle™ 100 cellular modem seamlessly incorporates a powerful Cortex M4F controller, full Bluetooth 5 and LTE-M/NB-IoT capabilities – all with full regulatory certifications and LTE carrier approvals. The Pinnacle 100 also delivers complete antenna flexibility, with pre-integrated internal or external antenna options such as the Revie Flex family of LTE and NB-IoT internal antennas.
Develop your application directly on the M4F controller using Zephyr RTOS to cut BOM costs and power consumption. Take advantage of the Zephyr community, Laird Connectivity’s sample code (cellular, Bluetooth) and hardware interfaces, or use our hosted mode AT commands set.
Extremely power conscious, the Pinnacle 100 is ideal for battery-powered devices operating at the edge of your IoT networks, seamlessly bridging the cellular WAN to the Bluetooth PAN. It’s never been easier to bridge wireless Bluetooth 5 sensor data to cloud services like AWS IoT over a low-power LTE connection.
- LTE-M / NB-IoT radio via Sierra HL7800 (Altair ALT1250) – LTE bands 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 8, 12, 13, 20, 28
- MCU / Bluetooth 5 radio via Nordic nRF52840 – BT v5, Coded PHY (Long range), 2MPHY, BLE Mesh
- Cortex-M4F – 32-bit @64 MHz, 256 KB of RAM, 1 MB internal flash, 8MB QSPI
- Antenna Options –Unique low-cost, pre-integrated antenna variant plus external variant with u.FL connectors
- Industrial Temp Range – Operating range -40° to +85° C
- Globally & Carrier Certified
- FCC, IC CE
- BT SIG, PTCRB, GCF
- AT&T
- Verizon, Vodafone (both pending)
- Flexible Programming – Design your way Hostless mode via Zephyr RTOS or Hosted mode AT Command Set
- Secure Firmware Upgrade – Comes pre-programmed with Laird’s secure bootloader
Pinnacle™ 100 Inside: Our MG100 IoT Gateway
The Sentrius MG100 Gateway offers a compact, out of box Bluetooth to Cellular gateway solution.
With the Pinnacle 100 inside, the MG100 gateway is a reliable IoT gateway for routing Bluetooth 5 to LTE-M/NB-IoT and on to the cloud. The MG100 supports advanced Bluetooth 5 features like CODED PHY and 2M PHY, for optimal Bluetooth performance.
It's designed to be powerful and flexible: offering low power consumption, battery back up options, integrated or external antenna options and the power of Zephyr RTOS for your application development. The MG100 seamlessly bridges local Bluetooth devices to the cloud in various environments like workplaces, campuses, factories, and more.
MVNO Options to get you started
LTE M - Global
Truphone addresses the most complex challenges of building IoT cellular devices by building a dedicated IoT SIM, a global IoT network, and an IoT platform to provide a truly global IoT cellular connectivity service. By partnering with Digi-Key, Truphone provides a one-stop-shop for customers' cellular connectivity requirements.
Every Pinnacle™ 100 Development Kit includes a Truphone SIM card with total of 250MB of FREE data, with 3 month expiration date from initial activation.
NB-IoT / LTE M - Europe
Arkessa is a dedicated Internet of Things cellular connectivity services provider, offering world-wide, world-class connectivity solutions that make it easy to design, deploy and manage your IoT devices securely, efficiently, and at scale, whatever your application or business model. With over ten years’ experience as a leading pioneer in IoT connectivity, Arkessa offers dedicated support, technical, and commercial flexibility to Laird Connectivity customers across Europe and beyond.
For every Pinnacle™ 100 Development Kit shipped to a customer in Europe, contact Laird Connectivity to receive a ready to go Arkessa SIM with 25MB data per month with 3 month expiration date from initial activation.

Specifications
Bluetooth: Nordic Semiconductor nRF52840
Product Type | Technology | OS/Software | System Architecture | Chipset (Wireless) | Antenna Type | Logical Interfaces | Frequency Range (Min) | Frequency Range (Max) | Frequency Range 2 (Min) | Frequency Range 2 (Max) | Additional Description | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
453-00010 | Modem | LTE-M, NB-IoT, Bluetooth 5.0 | AT Commands, Zephyr | Hosted, Hostless | Sierra Wireless HL7800, Nordic nRF52840 | Internal | UART, QSPI, SPI, ADC, I2C, GPIO | 2402 MHz | 2480 MHz | 703 MHz | 2170 MHz | Pinnacle 100 Modem |
Product Type | Technology | OS/Software | System Architecture | Chipset (Wireless) | Antenna Type | Logical Interfaces | Frequency Range (Min) | Frequency Range (Max) | Frequency Range 2 (Min) | Frequency Range 2 (Max) | Additional Description | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
453-00010-K1 | Development Kit | LTE-M, NB-IoT, Bluetooth 5.0 | AT Commands, Zephyr | Hosted, Hostless | Sierra Wireless HL7800, Nordic nRF52840 | Internal | UART, QSPI, SPI, ADC, I2C, GPIO | 2402 MHz | 2480 MHz | 703 MHz | 2170 MHz | Development Kit for Pinnacle 100 Modem |
Product Type | Technology | OS/Software | System Architecture | Chipset (Wireless) | Antenna Type | Logical Interfaces | Frequency Range (Min) | Frequency Range (Max) | Frequency Range 2 (Min) | Frequency Range 2 (Max) | Additional Description | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
453-00011 | Modem | LTE-M, NB-IoT, Bluetooth 5.0 | AT Commands, Zephyr | Hosted, Hostless | Sierra Wireless HL7800, Nordic nRF52840 | External | UART, QSPI, SPI, ADC, I2C, GPIO | 2402 MHz | 2480 MHz | 703 MHz | 2170 MHz | Pinnacle 100 Modem |
Product Type | Technology | OS/Software | System Architecture | Chipset (Wireless) | Antenna Type | Logical Interfaces | Frequency Range (Min) | Frequency Range (Max) | Frequency Range 2 (Min) | Frequency Range 2 (Max) | Additional Description | |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
453-00011-K1 | Development Kit | LTE-M, NB-IoT, Bluetooth 5.0 | AT Commands, Zephyr | Hosted, Hostless | Sierra Wireless HL7800, Nordic nRF52840 | External | UART, QSPI, SPI, ADC, I2C, GPIO | 2402 MHz | 2480 MHz | 703 MHz | 2170 MHz | Development Kit for Pinnacle 100 Modem |
Certified Antennas
001-0014
FlexPIFA Flexible Adhesive-Backed PIFA Internal AntennaFlexPIFA antenna with U.FL connector
Industry-first, flexible, planar inverted-F antenna for curved surfaces 2.5-3 dBi gain. 2.4 GHz and dual-band 2.4/5.5 GHz.
Become a Laird Connectivity Customer and Gain Exclusive Access to Our Design Services Team
- Antenna Scans
- Antenna selection and placement
- Custom antenna design
- Worldwide EMC testing / certifications
- Embedded RF hardware / firmware design
- Cloud architecture and integration
- Mobile application development
- Product & Industrial Design
Documentation
Can I use the SIM card from my phone in the Pinnacle 100?
No, the Pinnacle 100 and the MG100 are LTE Cat-M1 or NB-IoT modems which require their own SIM card and are not compatible with the network your mobile phone uses. Customers need to source SIMs specifically for LTE Cat-M1 or NB-IoT networks through the carriers directly or through an MVNO.
Do I have to use the Segger branded debugger to program over the 2-wire SWD interface (JTAG) of the Nordic-based modules?
Yes, any programmer/debugger that supports the SWD 2-wire interface and the Cortex M4F processor should work with the Nordic-based modules. You can find information about the memory map in the nRF5xxxx Product Specification under the Memory and NVMC sections.
Do you have a hostless mode example for the Pinnacle 100?
The best example to use when designing your Hostless system on the Pinnacle 100 is to use the Out-of-the-Box Demo example as a template. Please see the OOB Demo manifest on our Github repository here for steps to building the firmware: https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_OOB_Demo_Manifest
How do I switch between the HL7800 AT command interface and the smartBASIC AT command interface of the Pinnacle 100 Cewllular modem?
In order to toggle between the HL7800 AT command interface and the smartBASIC AT command interface, the DTR tickbox in UwTerminal needs to be de-asserted (Toggled) and then re-asserted(Toggled) again.
How much Flash memory is available on the Pinnacle 100 for customer applications?
There should be approximately 750KB of space in the hostless version of the module after loading the soft device and image for the Nordic nRF52840 and Sierra Wireless HL7800.
What is the correct Zephyr Branch to use for Pinnacle 100?
It is recommend that you reference the https://github.com/LairdCP/Pinnacle_100_OOB_Demo_Manifest for the correct Zephyr branch to use with the Pinnacle 100 to ensure that you will not run into any issues when compiling applications.