The A9 GSM/GPRS Development Board is designed around the Ai-Thinker A9 module, which features quad-band GSM/GPRS capabilities. The A9 module allows you to easily add SMS, voice, internet connectivity and much more to your next project. The development board also contains other helpful hardware additions such as lithium charge management, a microphone, a speaker interface, a Micro-USB connector (Used mainly for power), multiple push-buttons, indication LEDs, a TF card slot and SIM card slot, and breakout pins for UART, SPI and I2C interfaces. You can view the full specifications by following the links listed in the “RESOURCES” section below.
Features / Specs
- Module: Original Ai Thinker A9
- Operating Voltage: 5V USB or Lithium Battery (3.3 – 4.2VDC)
- Standby Current: < 2mA
- Operating temperature: -30℃ to + 80℃
- GPIO Level: 2.8V
- Quad-Band GSM/GPRS Frequencies: 850/900/1800/1900MHz
- GPRS Class: 10
- Sensitivity: < -105dBm
- GPRS Data Service Maximum Data Rates: Download @ 85.6Kbps / Upload @ 42.8Kbps
- UART Ports: 3 Total (1x Programming UART Port / 1x AT Command UART Port / 1x General Use UART Port)
- Supports standard GSM 07.07 / GSM 07.05 AT commands and Ai-Thinker extended commands
- Supports digital audio and analog audio, as well as HR, FR, EFR and AMR speech coding
- Pre-Loaded GPRS Firmware Version: AT Command Firmware V02.02.20190915R
Firmware Upgrade
All of our modules come pre-flashed with AT Command firmware, but if you’d like to flash new firmware to the module or are just interested in how the process works, then please read on.
For starters you will need a separate USB to UART module and the development board you’d like to flash. The A9 board can be powered via the Micro-USB connector, and you will need to connect the USB to UART module’s TX and RX pins to the Hst_RX and Hst_TX pins respectively. Don’t forget to common the Ground connections as well. The first link in the “RESOURCES” section has a nice pinout diagram of the A9 module.
Next comes the software side of things. You will need to download the Ai Thinker A9/A9G Firmware Flashing Tool and a GPRS firmware file. We have provided links to both of these in the “RESOURCES” section below. We have found that only v2.1 of the Flashing Tool works with Windows 10 and have yet to test it on other operating systems. After you have downloaded all the files, follow the Operation Manual linked below to flash the new firmware to your board. The whole process is quite straight forward. Since a lot of the info in the manuals, etc. is not written in English, we find that the Google Translate App with camera functionality works wonders here.
If all goes well, you can connect a UART interface (Default Baudrate is 115200) to the other set of UART pins (Not Hst_RX, Hst_TX) and start sending the module AT commands.
