I’ve been trying to get into LoRa and LoRaWAN for my masters thesis and this semester I’ve decided to process theoretical part, and to make a demo.
I got the P-NUCLEO-LRWAN1 already, but I’m realizing, that I might need something more, as there is no gateway in reasonable distance from me (I am situated in Košice, Slovakia, EU).
Goals for my Demo: I want to transmit a test message from my node, to my server.
My questions:
I presume I will need to get myself a gateway, will this suffice? seeed 113990658
If not, do you have advice for better / different gateway? Further on into the thesis, I’d like to make a smaller network in my city, within 2km radius (I live in apt that oversees most of the city)
-Would it be more suitable to initiate a community in the city as university?
I’ve seen information, that LoRa can go up to 100s of km, is that really possible for a commercially available and affordable HW? Because from what I’ve read it’s more of a theoretical information than practical one
No, that’s a Single Channel Packet Forwarder - if you look on the Dragino website you’ll see that they say it is NOT for use with a LoRaWAN network. We do not support SCPF as they can only hear on a single channel and a LoRaWAN gateway has to be able to hear on 8 channels. Additionally, you’ll have to hack the Nucleo board to enable it to communicate with the SCPF. A gateway is not much more than a SCPF these days.
Communities are what ever fits or works for the community around you - if you brand it as part of the university, will you get other people from around the city joining in?
Yes, all the chipsets inside are the same so it’s all about antenna placement but you have to get the device up high or the gateway on the top of a mountain. This is all a distraction. For normal use, think 1-2km in a city, 5-10km in rural areas but it’s mostly about line of sight - if the device can ‘see’ the gateway then there is a reasonable chance of reception. So you could have a device 250m away from a gateway that’s not being heard and then move it to the roof of a tower block that then gets heard be a gateway in the next town/city along.
I see now, I looked it up and this seems like a good option: Dragino LPS8. It’s described as indoor LoRaWAN gateway, and has 10 channels. I will get around to order it.
I’m unsure whether there is interest in my city, and I don’t think I would have time to manage it, that’s why university sounded like cool idea, but I still have more than a year to make a decision on that.
The LPS8 is good and you can mount an antenna outside if you need to.
Most cities have a need for low cost device monitoring in some way - think of something small and build it from there. As for time, it could be one evening meeting every other month. Good for the CV for when you graduate. I wouldn’t recommend setting it up as a university led project because it may then collapse when you leave if there is no one to take over.