I’ve received an email from digikey to me saying that IMP002 will no longer be available within the next 2 years. Is this true, t
the 002 was greate because of FCC precertification. …now i’ll have to do it myself? + It was possible to create a product using the imp002 by hand soldering, now with imp003 its going to be almost impossible to do “hobbyist” project…
its all very sad
Are items like this ready to use?
I wonder how many of these will be available for sale and if they are ready to be blinked up.
The imp003 breakout is a fair bit more expensive than the imp002 module.
the 002 was greate because of FCC precertification. ...now i'll have to do it myself? + It was possible to create a product using the imp002 by hand soldering, now with imp003 its going to be almost impossible to do "hobbyist" project....Agree. Is it confirmed the imp002 is going to be phased out? Need to start planning for this now if that's the case..
Jamesb, it is confirmed
this will be bad for electricimp I think because hobbyist will no longer go with this device, the imp001 was greate, but expensive, imp002 a little better, cheaper.
but man, imp003 and imp005 will required certification, 4 layer board, no hand soldering possible…ect I really think its a bad news for all of us
“Are items like this ready to use?”
These breakout boards come ready to use. I make sure each has been blinked up and the firmware brought up to date. I only make a few at a time since the demand hasn’t been great. I think these are great little boards and if there was enough demand I would have them made by the 100 unit batch in Beijing to save costs.
The design is open source and anyone can have pcbs made inexpensively at OSH Park. I use low-temperature solder paste and a hot plate/hot air gun combo rework station to assemble them. It’s actually pretty easy.
If you’d prefer to buy IMP003 breakout boards assembled and ready for action I welcome inquiries. Like all things, the higher the sales volume, the lower the price will be…
Has a timeframe for device availability been announced? Is it 24 months or 2 months with existing stock only? Pity as a registered developer that I got notification only from DigiKey!
Darryl
When online stock is gone, I expect Electric Imp will provide imp002 directly to existing paying customers, while future pooled order quantities are sufficiently high for minimum series.
Providing an IoT platform, and then leave paying customers with mission critical services beached, with an outlook of [bi]-yearly redesign+full certifications, would be a clear indication to new potential customers.
What ever happened to the launch of the cheaper IMP004. This would be another alternative.
imp002 is out of production; we were selling through the last units but some customers purchased large amounts and depleted our stock unexpectedly fast.
imp003 is pre-certified (FCC/IC) with the recommended antenna like many other modules - but yes you do need an impedance controlled 4 layer PCB. We are also in the process of performing CE testing on this module so, like the imp002, you can refer to these test reports in your product certs. 003 is a lot cheaper than 002.
However, imp004 has been reborn as imp004m; this device is closer in capability to imp002 (integrated antenna, approved, can be used on 2 layer boards, 3.5 UARTs, 2 SPIs plus system SPI flash like 003) but has significantly more RAM. More details on this will be released soon. It’s also even cheaper than 003 
Hi Hugo,
Good to hear about the imp004m. Is there any preliminary info available anywhere - pinouts, antenna, current specs, a rough idea on release data, how it compares to imp002?
I might look at buying a bundle of imp002 while they’re available and then jump straight to the 004m if it’s coming out soon enough.
No preliminary info yet. Antenna is on-board, like 002. Current specs are better than 002 (lower current TX, lower current RX) but deep sleep likely to be in the 20uA range.
Hoping to ship this in late late Q3.
Thanks for the info, helps with planning!
Thanks for the info Hugo, but a clear capability/price/MOQ/expected GA comparison of all the future modules/SoCs would be really needed a this point in time, even when it is with a big caveat on price and availability which we know is Murata’s business. We all have to redesign our products with the dissappearance of 002 so have to make the choices now, not when the devices actually come available. Talking to Murata doesn’t help much honestly, they don’t even reply to 2 out of the 3 questions and if they reply it’s besides the point.
In our case we wil have to do a production run soon and need to decide if we
Not an easy situation as the safe alternative (wait and continue on 002) doesn’t exist anymore while it was a perfectly well working product…
PS while I’m at it, PCB footprints for the devices for anything else besides Altium would be nice as well… most use Eagle then Ultiboard or more recently Designsparc PCB but not Altium…
Just bought what I need for the year of 002 on Digikey. For those of you facing the same challenge, there’s about 660 of the EU version and 295 of the US version still in stock, but it’s going down by the day…
005 is really available soon - ie, it’s in mass production now for the lead customer. It will be going into distribution (so you will be able to buy 100’s), and the eval kits just shipped from the fab today.
Can’t promise footprints in other PCB cad as Altium is what we use in-house. Can you create footprints from gerbers in Eagle, for example?
One other note - when you bless a module, you can set the country code (even on 002) so EU/US versions are interchangeable for production use. There is only one variant of 003/004/005.
We will have a good comparison matrix for you soon. All devices will be available qty 1 through distribution, though obviously that’s not the cheapest way to buy volume.
Import gerbers into Eagle:
btw, some updates on distribution - imp005 will be going into both Digikey and Mouser in the next 1-2 months, and imp003 will be available at mouser soon too