Remember that sinking feeling? You have a killer IoT concept, maybe a vibration sensor that predicts pump failures before they tank production, or an edge AI node spotting defects on the assembly line in real time. Then reality hits: hours lost scouring supplier sites for the right eval board, mismatched pinouts killing your breadboard setup, and a stack of PDFs so deep you need a forklift. By the time you are wired up, the budget is blown, the timeline is toast, and your manager asks why the “quick prototype” took three weeks. You are not alone – and you no longer have to be.
Enter DevKit HQ, Farnell’s new Development Kit Headquarters, the online nerve centre that flips the script on dev kit discovery. It is not just another catalogue. It is a smart hub that lets you drill down by application (think AI/ML, IoT, wireless, smart sensing, motor control or power management), supplier, MCU/MPU/FPGA series, or trending tech like Edge AI accelerators. Pair it with our curated design resources (schematics, Gerber files, code snippets, and step-by-step guides) and suddenly you are not hunting. You are building.
The real game-changer? We partnered with Avnet for that seamless sensor-to-cloud magic we baked with Avnet’s /IOTCONNECT™ platform across numerous kits, turning raw hardware into market-ready demos in under 10 minutes. No cloud wizardry required.
This is not hype. It is the fix for the dev kit drudgery that holds back your next IoT or AI breakthrough. Let us break it down: the pains we solve, the tools that make it painless, and a roadmap to get you from sketch to stakeholder demo faster than ever.
The Dev Kit Dilemma Ends Here
You are speccing an Edge AI setup for anomaly detection in a factory HVAC system. Do you grab NXP’s i.MX 93 with its Ethos-U65 NPU, Renesas’ RASynBoard with the Syntiant neural co-processor, Infineon’s PSoC 6 Edge family, or ST’s STM32N6 with 600 GOPS Neural-ART for vision tasks? Each has killer specs, but comparing them means bouncing between five vendor portals and praying the expansion headers match your sensors.
DevKit HQ ends that pain. Explore the right kit, for example “Edge AI/ML”, and get a listing of range of kits from AMD, Analog Devices, Arduino, Infineon, Microchip, NXP, Raspberry Pi, Renesas, STMicroelectronics and more all in one place.
Today’s Hottest Kits, All /IOTCONNECT Ready
DevKit HQ stays fresh, spotlighting new launches with real-world hooks for IoT and Edge AI. Here is a ready-to-use selection that we see flying off the shelves right now. Every single one is /IOTCONNECT enabled for instant cloud demos.
Predictive Maintenance & Condition Monitoring
|
Demo Application |
Supplier & Kit |
Key MCU/MPU Series |
Why It Wins (with /IOTCONNECT) |
|
Vibration FFT + Edge AI |
i.MX 93 (dual Cortex-A55 + Cortex-M33 + Ethos-U65 NPU) |
Wi-Fi 6 + 802.15.4 + EdgeLock secure enclave, streams processed FFT data in < 5 min | |
|
Acoustic Event Detection |
RA6M4 + Syntiant NDP120 + DA16600 Wi-Fi/BT |
Years on a coin cell, detects machine anomalies locally, alerts cloud instantly | |
|
Motor Telemetry & Sound Class |
PSoC 6 AI (dual Cortex-M4/M0+) |
On-board ML acceleration, ready for Zephyr RTOS industrial fleets |
Smart Sensing & Environmental Monitoring
|
Application Focus |
Supplier & Kit |
Key MCU/MPU Series |
Why It Wins (with/IOTCONNECT) |
|
Indoor Air Quality |
XENSIV PAS CO2 + PSoC 6 |
10-sensor suite, live Azure/AWS dashboard in minutes | |
|
Cellular Soil Moisture |
AVR + Trust&GO secure element |
Direct NB-IoT/Cat-M to cloud, perfect for remote agriculture | |
|
Multi-Protocol Secure Node |
STM32U5 (Cortex-M33 + TrustZone) |
Wi-Fi / BLE / Sub-GHz / NFC in one tiny board |
Vision & Gesture AI
|
Demo Application |
Supplier & Kit |
Key MCU/MPU Series |
Why It Wins (with /IOTCONNECT) |
|
Real-time Vision AI |
STM32N6 (Cortex-M55 800 MHz + 600 GOPS Neural-ART) |
MIPI CSI-2 pipeline, 720p inference, metadata-only cloud upload | |
|
People Counting & Gesture |
i.MX 93 (A55 + M33 + Ethos-U65 NPU) |
Small form factor + dual GbE + camera interface | |
|
Edge ML Prototyping |
RA8M1 (Cortex-M85 480 MHz) |
Massive RAM + FSP ecosystem for custom TensorFlow Lite models |
Industrial Automation & Secure Gateways
|
Demo Application |
Supplier & Kit |
Key MCU/MPU Series |
Why It Wins (with /IOTCONNECT) |
|
Secure Edge Gateway |
SAMA5D2 (Cortex-A5 500 MHz) |
Linux-ready SOM for fleet management, OTA ready | |
|
Real-Time Control + AI |
i.MX RT1060 Crossover (M7 @ 1 GHz) |
HyperFlash + Ethernet for high-speed telemetry | |
|
LoRa Asset Tracking |
STM32WL55 LoRa + STM32WB5 BLE |
GNSS + full sensor suite + STSAFE-A110 crypto |
Plug-and-Play Power: /IOTCONNECT + DevKit HQ = Market-Ready in Days
Every kit listed above is enabled with /IOTCONNECT binary. Just follow the simple get started guide, power up, join Wi-Fi, and watch live sensor streams appear on a private AWS or Azure dashboard. For Edge AI boards, inference runs locally and only anomalies or metadata hit the cloud, cutting bandwidth by up to 90%. When you move to production, the same certificates and provisioning flow scale effortlessly to volume.
Your Advantage, Today and Tomorrow
Edge AI pilots are exploding into full deployments right now, and the teams that win will be the ones who prototype fastest and demo smartest. DevKit HQ + /IOTCONNECT gives you exactly that speed.
Stop scrolling through vendor sites. Start building.
→ Jump straight into DevKit HQ
→ Grab your free /IOTCONNECT trial (no card needed)
The edge belongs to the fast. Let’s get you there, today.
-The Farnell DevKit HQ Crew
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