Not sure I have seen an antenna for 868Mhz, with gain, that can receive boht horizonatally poloarised and vertically polarised signals, do you know of one ?
If you have access to program an Arduino board which has the bare RFM9x or DRF1272 LoRa modules, then you can use a pair of them to test your own antennas in real world situations, its really very easy.
Hi @Charles,
first of all thanks 4 ur pcb design. They make a start so much easier
I used the code from Andreas Spiess, who forked your code. He added some parts like the display and other things.You‘ll find the stuff here: https://github.com/SensorsIot/ESP-1ch-Gateway
I had one issue using it. It seems there’s a bug in the 2.4.0 version of the ESP8266 Community software. Switching back to the 2.3.0 solves the problem.
I was aware of the cloverleaf, developed by IBcrazy for use in FPV for radio control models.
A good choice for a transmitter, although it has no gain as such, but its not advised for the receiver I thought.
In the DIY article you linked to it says;
It is not the ideal receiver antenna however, because the reverse polarization rejection pattern is very erratic. You need to choose other types of antennas for the receiver such as the skew planar wheel (4 lobes)
The similar skew planar migh be better suited for a receiver, not sure how well it then performs as a transmitter.
Worth experimenting of course, but these type of antennas are very low gain, I would assume most gateways would want to be using gain antennas in order to increase their coverage for the majority of nodes which will be static.
@paulb
I ordered the same, just arrived. not had a chance to test mine yet though. waiting for the RAK831 to arrive so I can hook it all up.
Looks very good quality and arrived quite quickly
And of course if you drop the use of antennas with gain, and use ‘globe’ types for gateways instead, you would need between 4 and 10 times more gateways to give the same coverage.
I am also not really clear why there is a need to track birds and moles …