Anyone playing with LORA ?

Forums › Gadgets, robotics, home automation, electronics (including wearables) › Anyone playing with LORA ?

Talkiet

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#268259 8-Mar-2020 21:34

Direct LORA comms, not a telco service... I am looking at building a Point to point (with mesh repeaters if necessary) timing system that I would ideally like to be able to reliably communicate 20km through forest in hilly terrain. Quite prepared to mesh a few units together and the time to signal the remote end is not time critical (hundreds of milliseconds to even a few seconds is completely fine - timing is handled by GPS sync on both ends.

My question is what sort of aerials would give the best combo of price / range / small size / ease of setup and what sort of range could I expect for LOS and worst case scenario? Just trying to get a feel for achievable range and number of mesh units needed to budget for.

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

hio77

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#2434757 8-Mar-2020 22:38

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

richms

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#2434768 8-Mar-2020 23:36

Had a quick play with some 868MHz ones on some cheap ESP32 boards. It did the example arduino sketches fine and then I realised that I had no use for them so put them in the big box of good ideas at the time never to play with again. I went the whole length of the driveway here which no 433MHz or cheap 2.4Ghz things will do reliably.

Richard rich.ms

shanes

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#2434781 9-Mar-2020 06:08

Talkiet:

Direct LORA comms, not a telco service... I am looking at building a Point to point (with mesh repeaters if necessary) timing system that I would ideally like to be able to reliably communicate 20km through forest in hilly terrain. Quite prepared to mesh a few units together and the time to signal the remote end is not time critical (hundreds of milliseconds to even a few seconds is completely fine - timing is handled by GPS sync on both ends.

I'm starting on pretty much the same thing building timing gear for Car Club events, I'd be interested in progress/details of your project.

Just at the breadboarding stage, not much code written yet.

As for antennas, our events are a bit shorter (yours sound more like rally stages :) ) so was hoping that I'd get away with simple antennas, we can normally get voice comms from the start to the finish with handhelds. I have considered meshing but hope I don't have to go that far...

Delphinus

611 posts

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#2434820 9-Mar-2020 09:18

I'm involved with a project to put in 'smart' water meters across a community run water scheme. Using Adeunis pulse counters connecting back via The Things Network. We're installing the gateways as there is nothing available in that area.

neb

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#2434828 9-Mar-2020 09:27

shanes:
I'd be interested in progress/details of your project.

Same here, I've got a vague plan to use something like this as a letterbox mail alert and LoRa would be more feasible than WiFi in terms of power use. Main problem is a low-powered sensor that can detect letters, typical prox sensors aren't meant for low-power use.

Talkiet

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#2434851 9-Mar-2020 10:29

shanes:

I'm starting on pretty much the same thing building timing gear for Car Club events, I'd be interested in progress/details of your project.

Just at the breadboarding stage, not much code written yet.

As for antennas, our events are a bit shorter (yours sound more like rally stages :) ) so was hoping that I'd get away with simple antennas, we can normally get voice comms from the start to the finish with handhelds. I have considered meshing but hope I don't have to go that far...

Interesting, sounds like we're thinking of very similar things... I have beams, screens, printers and microcontrollers/GPS/LoRa chips on the way at the moment and am doing the SW architecture planning at the moment...

I'll try and do a better job of documenting this than I did for my racecar lap timer / tyre temp monitor / data logger / digital dash / video overlay project :-) (Everything in the overlay below came from something I built :-)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3z1cc6wSpHE?rel=0' frameborder='0' allowfullscreen>

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

Talkiet

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#2434856 9-Mar-2020 10:34

Ok, now I can't edit that post for some reason

https://youtu.be/3z1cc6wSpHE

Should work instead of the broken embedding...

Cheers - N

Please note all comments are from my own brain and don't necessarily represent the position or opinions of my employer, previous employers, colleagues, friends or pets.

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Tinkerisk

4224 posts

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#2435243 9-Mar-2020 18:03

LoRa = link layer only, P2P

LoRaWAN = link layer + network layer

I'm using LoRaWAN on TTN only.

- NET: FTTH, OPNsense, 10G backbone, GWN APs, ipPBX
- SRV: 12 RU HA server cluster, 0.1 PB storage on premise
- IoT: thread, zigbee, tasmota, BidCoS, LoRa, WX suite, IR
- 3D: two 3D printers, 3D scanner, CNC router, laser cutter

shanes

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#2435274 9-Mar-2020 19:11

Talkiet:

Interesting, sounds like we're thinking of very similar things... I have beams, screens, printers and microcontrollers/GPS/LoRa chips on the way at the moment and am doing the SW architecture planning at the moment...

Very similar... I've already got the hardware, beams from existing gear, LCD's, printers, Mega256's, GPS and LoRa radios.

I'm using Mega256's as I want proper serial ports and enough interrupts to use the GPS PPS and beam inputs.

I just need to get on with it...

dgashby

71 posts

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#2435384 9-Mar-2020 21:17

Definitely worth looking up The Things Network (TTN), a community based global LoRaWAN network. There are active user communities in most major centers around NZ. Even if you choose not to go the TTN route, you'll probably find lots of useful resources including information on antenna designs suitable for use on LoRa frequencies.

hio77

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#2435398 9-Mar-2020 21:57

dgashby:

Definitely worth looking up The Things Network (TTN), a community based global LoRaWAN network. There are active user communities in most major centers around NZ. Even if you choose not to go the TTN route, you'll probably find lots of useful resources including information on antenna designs suitable for use on LoRa frequencies.

It's gotten really popular of late. Back when i was considering going lorawan, i looked at it, and i was going to be the only relay in the city basically... and i'd be way out in the wops so it didnt make sense to add the overhead.

#include <std_disclaimer>

Any comments made are personal opinion and do not reflect directly on the position my current or past employers may have.

spicedreams

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#2461148 14-Apr-2020 15:12

I have just been doing something similar, in my case to measure water flow from a ram pump outlet so I can tune the ram pump itself to maximise flow. The two ends are several hundred meters apart (through bush) and a hundred meters apart in elevation; so traipsing between them to check the result of a tweak would be tedious.

I am using TTGo LoRa boards with a YF S201 flow meter, which pulses a pin to indicate a volume of water has flowed, so the software just has to count the pulses and divide by the elapsed time. I'm using just the LoRa PHY level, not LoRaWAN at this stage. neither end has internet access...

My main concern is the antennae. I will probably have to replace the stock helical jobs with something with a straight wire and ground plane.

Delphinus:

I'm involved with a project to put in 'smart' water meters across a community run water scheme. Using Adeunis pulse counters connecting back via The Things Network. We're installing the gateways as there is nothing available in that area.