Stumbled across this when looking for similar, haven’t tried yet but very tempting! Has anyone else used this yet? (looks reasonably new)
http://e.pavlin.si/2018/05/07/lora-module-in-dil-form/
details on github
9 Likes
Hello! I am the author. You may ask questions here.
Marko
Welcome! Glad to know you are around! 
Any plans to sell (assembled) devices or place bare board on a pcb market place (tindie, pcb.io,…etc) so TTN’ers & others can buy/build?
BTW we have also been sharing some of your other work (RAK811 3D case, Q&D 868Mhz Ant…) if not yet seen 
Nice board! 
Just my 2 cents here:
And the nice Arduino based software stack for that is here:
EU868, US915, AU915, AS923, IN865, KR920 support …Save/restore to EEPROM … OTAA and ABP … optimized US915/AU915 join sequence … Disconnect detection … commissioning via EEPROM …
If you want also a GPS/GNSS onboard, then what about this here:
Again nice code along with it, including a GNSS API that deals with putting the GPS/GNSS into a low power mode (down to around 7uA power consumption …). Ah, there is also a SPI FLASH onboard, what you can access via a builtin filesystem, and at the same time more or less via USB. So nice for data logging.
Disclaimer, I do write the software I linked to 
6 Likes
I like the look of both boards and have done since they came out, esp the Cricket, - Kris (@onehorse) has done a good job - but was put off by the price - with UK dely they come in at ~$55 & ~$85 each …hummm. 
Have used various modules/bds so far inc RN2483a on break outs & PICTails, iMST 880/LoRaMOTE’s, Laird RM1xx (@Charles does a neat Bkout for that), RAK811’s & 813/15’s and bunch more but still looking for a cost effective Murata versions. By comparison the RAK811 TrackerBd is ~$52 del UK and think 811 SensorBd was <<$40 last time I bought and even the comprehensive 815 inc accessories like LED display, solar panel GPS Ant etc,comes in aro $70-75. And these are supposed to be FCC/CE cert. Killer is Tindie dely I think - UK dely is ~$15 vs RAK ~half that. Was hoping to do something good with the SCiDROM board or an equivalent…if anyone knows of others please shout…am expecting a useful/flexible board solution from a UK vendor in next month or two but cant wait!
1 Like
Cricket with 18 mm active patch antenna acquiring a fix every two hours, storing on flash and sending long/lat/alt, pressure, temperature, humidity, battery level, and acceleration via LoRaWAN to TTN every ten minutes uses ~300 uA. Wake/fix/LoRaWAN Tx on motion will increase this. Sleep current ~12 uA.
There is no other LoRaWAN tracker that even comes close to this ultra-low-power performance.
You get what you pay for…
2 Likes
Jeff, couple of observations. B-L072Z-LRWAN1 is $39, P-NUCLEO-LRWAN1 (The L073RZ NUCLEO plus the SX1272MB2DAS board is $75 if you buy them as a combo, $45 if you buy the pieces separate).
The RAK811 Trackers is $45 (plus $15 shipping, so about $60). It has a MAX-7Q on, a power hog that only supports GPS. You could get Grasshopper plus a decent GNSS (say REYAX RY82530) for about the same cost. So there does not seem to be such a huge price difference.
But that IMHO does not actually matter that much. Scanning the RAK 811 thread, in “wait mode” the state of the art seems to be 6.5mA. The CMWX1ZZABZ only board is @ 2.1uA, and the asset tracker variant is at 12uA. Yes, 1/500 the power. I have not measured say Grasshopper with an e-cheapo GPS off ebay (say VK2828U7G5, $7 off aliexpress) … But the GNSS code that ships along with Grasshopper would happily support that.
Which brings me to the next point. Personally my time for playing around with things is limited. I’d like to make use of the hardware I got and get to what I really like to do with it (say build a sensor box). When I scan the RAK 811 thread (or the one for BSFrance / DIYMall LoRaM3-D) then I see a lot of “sort of works” or “kind of needs this patch” …
The link I posted for the ArduinoCore-stm32l0 works on Kris’s boards and the B-L072Z-LRWAN1 board, hopefully next week P-NUCLEO-LRWAN1 will be added as well. LoRaWAN works out of the box … Just saying …
3 Likes
FYI: The current version LoRaM3-D boards are not really designed with (ultra) low power in mind.
Arduino core that works with B-L072Z-LRWAN1 Discovery Kit, nice!
LoRaWAN works out of the box
How? With LMIC-Arduino?
“This core is based on the Arduino SAMD Core.”
B-L072Z-LRWAN1 also work’s with the ‘Arduino Core STM32’ core. How do the cores compare?
Code is based up LoRaMac-node … Heavily modified though. But I guess that does not matter that much. All of the functionality is wrapped into a nice and way more useful Arduino Class. Lot’s of examples how to use things. Here the link to the include file to show the API (sorry, I am notoriously bad about writing docs):
Guess from a technical point of view this core is written from scratch, low power and high performance in mind, and compatibility with the “Arduino SAMD Core”. The other code you referring to is WI6Lab’s attempt to come up with something generic ontop of ST’s HAL.
Thanks.
The other code you referring to is WI6Lab’s attempt to come up with something generic ontop of ST’s HAL.
WI6Lab? Isn’t ‘Arduino Core STM32’ the official ST supported HAL based Arduino core for STM32?
For someone new to STM32 with Arduino, the world of different Arduino cores for STM32 looks rather messy. Naming of the different cores is confusing and inconsistent and the different cores are not (fully) compatible.
There is Roger’s F103 (Maple based core) which is for F103 only. Then there is the HAL based ‘Arduino Core STM32’ core supported by ST (or some of it’s employees) and there also is the STM32GENERIC core which is also HAL based and several forks of it exist (e.g BSFrance). And there probably are more.
I would like to use these cores with PlatformIO but it looks like currently only Roger’s F103 core is supported.
1 Like
Ok Guys, @onehorse @GrumpyOldPizza please dont get me wrong here…let me re-iterate my 1st line
I like the look of both boards and have done since they came out, esp the Cricket, - Kris (@onehorse) has done a good job! Indeed a very good job and both of your comments are part of why and re-enforce what I like about them…
For tracker vs simple sensor apps - mine (so far) and I would say 8/10 client systems over last 2-3 years have been focused on vehicle, plant & equipment, larger assets & Agri-machinery etc. where there has been (at least intermittent) access to 5/12/24V supply or where I have been able to tap into solar or other energy harvesting sources for top up, operation has been for days/weeks/many months vs many years, so ‘absolute minimum’ power consumption hasn’t (yet) been the priority - as you say Kris you pay your money and take your choice Indeed many of my own use cases and some consultancy work has involved the mapping of coverage for systems integrators, commercial, NGO & local/council government organisations, or for my own deployments, where battery powered devices need to spend a day or two or maybe three days ‘in the field’ whilst mapping with opportunities to recharge or change batt overnight and where the high TX repetition rate to get coverage and granularity, or long on air times at SF10,11 or 12 on the fringes or evaluating ‘not-spots’ & dead zones of reception areas, means more concerned about butting up against duty-cycle and potential fair use issues vs low power in sleep modes as the total TX consumption is far greater than any sleep/low power mode consumption. That also typically means having several devices running concurrently and overlapping TX or running sequentially to ensure no one device exceeds limits and when running several devices (5-10 typical, over 20 for bigger jobs not unusual) an extra $10, 20 or even $30+ per device soon mounts up
Kris, @onehorse are you able to confirm if your devices are FCC/IC/CE/ETSI-RED certified (always helps my case )
@GrumpyOldPizza sounds like you’ve been busy on the SW side which is great (as I have commented in other threads I’m not a softie and find all this -esp different IDE’s and support mechanisms - a bit of a challenge so anything to make matters easier welcome )
Not sure where you are based for shipping but Tindie definitely tells me ~$15 for shipping one of Kris’s boards to UK where RAK via Aliexpress is ~$7 so don’t see same as you.
Yes, well aware of the ST B-L072Z-LRWAN1 Bd - nice bit of Dev kit - but much larger than the 2483A & 811 breakout bds, and others I have been using…I also have SX1272 & 1276 mBed dev bds here for use with various MCU dev kits but wouldn’t use in the field (unless experimenting)
Will continue to watch the Grasshopper & Cricket bds, and any emerging support around them, develop as am sure some use cases may demand such devices and would be interested to get a couple of them for eval but haven’t dipped toe in water there yet for reasons above. As one of the smaller modules around the CMWX1ZZABZ is definitely on roadmap for eval for a series of small sensors planned by/through one of my companies hence my interest…
Appreciate the comments, observations and feedback…any other good ideas please keep them coming
WI6Labs did the original work (perhaps contracted by ST ?) It also seems that this is work that some employees maintain outside the official channels.
Compatibility is a big issue, which is why I am trying to drive the point home that this code for CMWX1ZZABZ is compatible with the original from arduino.cc. Not sort of, maybe half way …
I am based in the US (sunny Colorado if it matters 
)
So the prices for shipping, I pulled up on ebay / aliexpress this morning. At the end of the day if you buy more than one or two at a time, there is a discount in shipping and/or unit price. Guess you have to pester Kris about that one. I am just doing the Software there … because I like to play 
The making it easier is key. On this forum I see a lot of folks struggling with things one should not struggle … While I am personally not the biggest fan of the Arduino IDE (any IDE for that matter), it does make things a lot easier, and you can get up and running with something half way reasonable in a rather short amount of time. So if you get a B-L072Z-LRWAN1 around, why not quickly test drive the software stack and see.
The priorities for our board designs are, in order, 1) ultra-low power, 2) small form factor, 3) robust system layer and 4) easy to use Arduino abstraction layer. If these aren’t required for your application/use case, by all means use the cheaper alternatives.
The boards we design use the FCC-certified Murata Module; this means self-certification of derivative products (in the US) is straightforward. Can’t say anything about the rules in the UK or elsewhere…
The Grasshopper design is entirely open-source. If Tindie is too dear, then order the pcbs from OSH Park (they are in the shared space) and assemble one or more of your own to save a few dollars.
Is it possible to use your port of Semtech’s LoRaMac-node (I assume that is the LoRaWAN library) with other STM32 versions as a better alternative for LMIC-Arduino, or is it narrowly tied to your STM32L0 core?
What would it take to adapt the library for more wider (HAL based) STM32 use?
1 Like
The LoRaWAN class is a wrapper around the LoRaMac-node code. Does all the callback management, EEPROM save/restore, JOIN/REJOIN handling … Kind of all the additional stuff you need to make LoRaMac-node really useful for more than just a trivial demo.
The LoRaWAN code (or the LoRaMac-node code for that matter) is not tied to STM32L0, nor to the ArduinoCore-stm32l0 code. The radio layer however is heavily.
What would it take to move this over to some other MCU (I am assuming you are asking about STM32L1), no idea. I am pretty certain that at some point we’ll move that to STM32L4. In general, please consider that there were good reasons not to use ST’s HAL.
2 Likes
I continue questions about the STML0 Arduino core for the STM32L0 here: Big STM32 boards topic
(To prevent hijacking this topic with questions mainly about the core.)
Me and @sergiosena (wh did all the schematic/layout work) collaborated on a new Murata board with MikroE Click headers
For now this is a prototype for testing purposes - I don’t know exactly what we’ll do with it but if anyone has an interesting use for them and would like one please get in touch.
5 Likes
Hi. There is new version available with arduino nano pinout:
http://e.pavlin.si/2018/06/20/loradunchy-arduino-nano-pin-compatibile-lora-module-with-power-management/
2 Likes