Simple LoRaWAN GPS tracking unit - First unit for bike tracking project

End Devices (Nodes) Hardware
1

I am looking for advice and options for a GPS lorawan unit. I have a small personal project that I want to put a tracker on my motorcycle and hook it up to our local TTN.

I dont know anything about electronics and the small cicuit board type components that I see are a mytsery to me, but I am keen to learn if someone coudl please give some advice? I have looked at the Digital Matter Oyster which looks perfect and provev, but it’s also a bit out of my budget.

Can anyone provide some basic ideas about a unit I could buy? I’m looking for something with a reasonable range and I am not too concerned about battery life at this stage.
I’ve looked at https://heltec.org/product/wifi-lora-32-v2/ and I am not even sure if it will do what I am looking for?
I am looking at the Heltec options and I am justnot quite sure how they go together?

Any help for a total beginner would be appreciated. Thanks.

2

Hello,

Here is a fun project I found recently - How to build a Raspberry Pi GPS Tracker. I just received the material, did not have the time to test it yet. I like the idea to receive data by SMS.

Otherwise, I have successfully tested the USB/TTL Raspberry Pi GPS Tracker, which was easy to set up thanks to the USB connector. Have a look also here https://www.dfrobot.com/search-gps%20module.html

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I don’t think you’ll be able to find anything much cheaper than DigitalMatter’s Oyster, but take a look at their Yabby Edge and Browan’s object locator.

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Look at TTGO T-Beam!

E_T

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A pi is pretty much non-viable in that application given the power consumption. It’s also wholly unnecessary. A tracker is a job for a flash based MCU spending 99.9% of its time in low power suspend.

There are also some non-trivial algorithm challenges to doing meaningful tracking without violating the fair use policy data limits - particularly if your goal is to get useful information before an unauthorized movement takes the device out of the range of gateway coverage.

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Hi, this project was intended as a TTN Mapper - but gives you what you need: And as i may suggest - buy a beitan GPS Device. There are many frauds on ebay to get.

JoeRu/heltec_TTN_GPS_Mapper: An implementation for a heltec lora32 esp + tiny++ gps module as a ttnmapper.org example. (github.com)

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Cool. I’ll look into it! Thanks.

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There is no LoRaWAN GNSS asset tracker smaller than the Gnat. It is (20 mm x 20 mm). It is reasonably priced at $79.95. It is easy to use, programmable via USB using the Arduino IDE. There is a more or less complete tracking sketch on Github written for the Gnat that is easily configurable for your keys and frequency, etc. Just add antennas, battery, and enclosure. There is an on-board accel for wake-on-motion, sleep-on-no-motion functionality. More importantly, it is designed for ultra-low-power usage. Total sleep current is 2.5 uA with BMA400 motion watchdog continuously monitoring state of motion. Total current with LoRaWAN updated every 10 minutes and GNSS updated every two hours is < 250 uA. Not as turn-key as some solutions but probably the cheapest and smallest LoRaWAN asset tracker you will find.