Cellular IoT has a scaling problem. WiFi works when there's infrastructure. Bluetooth works when there's a phone nearby. But for products deployed in the field, on job sites, across agricultural land, or inside shipping containers, you need a radio that connects on its own.
Nordic Semiconductor's nRF9151 is built for exactly this. It's a system-in-package that combines an Arm Cortex-M33 application processor, an LTE-M/NB-IoT modem, and GNSS into a single 10x16mm chip. No external modem. No GPS module. No second processor for the radio stack. One chip handles the application and the connectivity.
That kind of integration matters when you're designing something that runs on batteries and needs to report data from places without WiFi. And it's now fully supported on Blynk.
The nRF9151 is Nordic's successor to the nRF9160, which became one of the most widely adopted cellular IoT modules since its launch. The 9151 improves on power consumption and shrinks the footprint while staying compatible with the Nordic software ecosystem.
Key specs:
For teams evaluating cellular hardware, the practical advantage is that there's nothing to wire together. The nRF9151 handles application code, radio management, and positioning in one package. That simplifies both the BOM and the firmware architecture compared to designs that pair a separate MCU with a cellular module.
We built a complete open-source Zephyr sample that handles the full path from a bare board to live data in Blynk.
MQTT over LTE-M. The device boots, initializes the modem, connects to the cellular network, and establishes a secure MQTT connection to Blynk's cloud over TLS 1.2. All standard Blynk operations work from there: virtual pin reads and writes, metadata sync, device state reporting. No proprietary protocol, no custom transport layer.
OTA firmware updates. The sample includes MCUboot and FOTA support, so you can push firmware to devices remotely through Blynk.Air. The firmware reports its version tag on every boot. For products in the field, this is the difference between driving to each install site and clicking a button in the web console.
UART credential provisioning. Instead of hardcoding tokens into firmware, credentials are stored in NVS (non-volatile storage) and provisioned over UART using a built-in Zephyr shell. Connect to the board, set template ID, server, and auth token via the cred command, and the device reboots and connects. In a manufacturing context, this means identical firmware on every unit. Credentials get provisioned per-device at the end of the line.
Three boards supported:
Pre-built binaries are available for all three on the releases page. You can test the integration without setting up a build environment.
The fastest path is to flash a pre-built binary and provision your credentials.
Set template and server first. The token command saves all credentials to flash and reboots the device automatically.
6. The device connects to LTE-M and starts publishing to Blynk
You can verify stored credentials at any time with cred show, or wipe everything with cred clear (which also reboots). The lte command gives you manual control over the modem: lte normal to connect, lte offline to disconnect, lte power_off to shut down the radio.
In our testing, the device connected to the cellular network in about 11 seconds and completed the MQTT handshake in under 3 seconds after that. From power-on to live data in Blynk in under 15 seconds.
If you want to build from source, the repo uses standard nRF Connect SDK tooling. Clone, configure your board overlay, and build with west. The README covers the full setup.
To set up the Blynk side, create a free account , configure a template with the datastreams you need, and generate an auth token. The Blynk mobile app and web console both show the same data, so you can monitor from whichever interface suits your workflow.
The whole integration — modem initialization, TLS, MQTT session management, OTA handling, credential storage — was built and tested in a single morning. Nordic's nRF Connect SDK handles the cellular and security stack, Blynk's MQTT API doesn't require custom server-side work, and the result is production-quality: MCUboot for safe firmware updates, TLS for secure communication, NVS for persistent credentials, and a shell interface for manufacturing provisioning.
The nRF9151's combination of cellular, GPS, and low power consumption opens up products that WiFi-based boards like the ESP32 can't serve. A few examples:
Asset tracking. GPS position reported over LTE-M to Blynk dashboards and native mobile apps. No WiFi infrastructure needed. Deploy a tracker on a shipping container, a piece of heavy equipment, or a fleet vehicle and see real-time location from anywhere. With Blynk's multi-tenant architecture, each of your customers sees only their own assets.
Remote environmental monitoring. Temperature, humidity, soil moisture, air quality sensors deployed in locations with no WiFi. Agricultural installations, remote infrastructure sites, outdoor environmental stations. The kind of deployments where running Ethernet isn't an option and the nearest access point is kilometers away.
Field service equipment. Devices that move between customer sites. A cellular connection means the device works everywhere there's LTE-M coverage without configuring WiFi at each location. For companies managing equipment across multiple client facilities, this removes one of the most common support calls.
For teams evaluating cellular IoT platforms, the sample is a working starting point. Clone the repo, flash a board, and you're connected.
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