Very disappointing LoRa range?

Hi

I have the following setup:

Each device has a 915mhz with this antenna.

The devices are about 1 mile away with line of sight. I am using the following settings:

  • FREQ = 915E6;
  • TX_PWR = 20;
  • SPREAD_FACTOR = 12;
  • BANDWIDTH = 125E3 (lower bandwidths don’t work);
  • CODING_DENOM = 5;
  • CRC_ON = true;

The reception at the above distance is very unreliable - the SNR is near -20 and the RSSI is also very poor.

Am I being unrealistic in my expectations or is there something wrong with my setup (antennas etc)?

Thanks

Your on the wrong forum sadly, this is TTN and Lorawan discussions :+1:

Lorawan (lora) will get you 10-15km good line of sight, we get 50-80km with height.

Ok thanks, are there any forums you’d recommend? People at adafruit/arduino don’t seem to have much experience with these types of issue.

Its ok, this forum is just very specific - others maybe able to advise the best place for support - re distance should get 10-15km with good line of sight.

If your in the UK those are not the allowed frequencies (pretty sure) - I am guessing from you user name inc UK

Arduino forum good place for support

As @jezd points out and as you were told when you asked about the Feather power consumption, this forum is for LoRaWAN on TTN only.

And if you are in the UK, you are not using an authorised frequency and if you were to set it to use the 868MHz range, you would need to reduce the power to 14dBm.

Did you ask a question in the Arduino forums ?

Seriously, who do you think you are? If you don’t want to answer, then DON’T ANSWER.

Jesus, some people here are like grumpy school teachers. And imagine going through people’s post history.

He’s a moderator, and part of his role is to police the threads to ensure they dont get cluttered with issues or questions that are perhaps better addressed on other forums. Whilst we are all willing to discuss the various issues around achieving good and sustainable range using LoRa/LoRaWAN and whilst you will find lots of discussion around, configurations, placement, antenna and cable types, optimisations etc. on the forum (Forum serach is your friend :slight_smile: ) we are also very clear that is in connection with TTN (TTI fund the forum infrastrtucture to the benefit of the TTN community) and in association with correct use of LoRaWAN (we are not here to support proprietary LoRa or LoRa P2P using specific frequency choices etc.) - there are plenty of other maker or industry fora that can be used for such off topic discussions and questions, including e.g. Semtech’s own forum. (Note you have the attention of some experienced forumites with people like Stuart @LoRaTracker and Nick @descartes well versed in e.g. long range HAB LoRa/LoRaWAN deployment use cases and also reguar poster @jezd responding to you).

Your posts indicate you are using a fixed frequency vs all random channels allowed under LoRaWAN, this forum focus was called out by @jezd, @descartes then re-enforced. Note all users posting history is available through profile pages so if you find a poster whom you trust and feel gives valuable information or guidance then it can be a useful exercise to look back at what they have had to say on various topics (e.g. @LoRaTracker who also has experience with LoRa P2P from early days with the technology, and who has done lots of field work wrt range testing), similarly if we see users asking questions that are out of scope or off topic then again we can call this out. If users regularly abuse (might be a strong term but not yet had enough coffee this morning to think of a more subtle term) or mis-appropriate the forum resource to repeatedly ask off topic questions or push own agenda’s then we can call this out or take stronger measures for persistent cases. And yes, by the nature of the role Mods like Nick are more likley to go digging into history - quite often this can be to understand wider issues and concerns a user may have and better help them but also this can bring up off topic posts or prior guidance give to posters. Nick had done that on prior post as he points out.

Ironically though not focussed on TTN your close out on that thread was an example of what could could be considered good forum behaviour - with questions asked and discussed and finally providing some feedback with a fix (in that case surpressing device power consumption) that may benefit others Adafruit M0 Feather with RFM95 - Expected Power Consumption - #6 by tjh1989uk , so please consider what we have said and avoid such challenging/confrontational behaviour. Clearly you can be a valued forumite if you play the ball vs play the man.

By the way we are all curious - where are you? is the (uk) a clue or not (your IP address didnt immediately resolve - Host1Plus? via BT? London?)

3 Likes

As I say, if you don’t want to help then simply don’t respond. And my location is absolutely NONE of your business.

Appreciate if you dont want to disclose - it is just something that can help us clarify and provide better reponses and help. Also It is a concern in that we are all using the technology and it is permitted under specific ‘freedoms’ and unlicensed conditions. If, as the guys suspected, you are using the technology on the wrong frequency band that could interfer with other legitimate users and also could bring the technology into disrepute possibly causing a tightening of restrictions which would impact us all!

Still, its your prison sentence :wink:

I just hope if in UK and using the 915Mhz Band as indicated, that you are atleast doing so in a secured & approved test environment and inside a faraday cage! :scream: (Note in the early days of testing and validating LoRa and measuring the acheivable sensitivity limits we had to use EMC protective DUT stations…inside another EMC protected DUT station… as that LoRa stuff sure can leak out into the general environment and be picked up elsewhere…just saying :wink:

If you are dabbling with the 915Mhz band in the UK then you need to be aware of this…and the Cellco’s dont pull their punches when prosecuting miscreants! :wink:

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And it’s not particularly that I don’t want to answer, it’s just not forum policy so the moderators are somewhat duty bound to curtail off-topic discussions. We must also ensure that anyone else reading a thread see any concerns about legalities.

I think @Jeff-UK has said most of it, excepting that the forum is a community run by volunteers, so there is no entitlement to anything - not even TTN support as bizarre as that may seem - it’s all best endeavours.

As @Jeff-UK mentions, I can get LoRa to LoRa a fair distance - 118km from a 16cm piece of wire on a balloon at 30km up to a mag-mount aerial - so not exactly state of the art antenna, but in the grand scheme of those activities I’m still a novice. All my HAB kit is from Uputronics as I like to get my payloads back (despite Anthony & Dave enjoying my repeat custom due to my own stupidity with Helium fills), so I know the kit and I know it’s good. I also have a Adafruit Feather M0 with RFM95 on my desk as a go to device for testing when using MCCI LMiC and that works very well.

I’m aware that other forums don’t have much action for LoRa or LoRaWAN. Perhaps you could start a topic on AdaFruit’s forum and put a link here to see how that goes.