What is your experience with lora boards?

End Devices (Nodes) Hardware
21

I build my own bares bones boards, ATmega328 or ATmega1284 mostly.

2 Likes
22

I have been using Heltec boards (V2) for several tests; 1 channel LoRa gateway, LoRa FM band inspector (in combination with a $3FM receiver).
Even without extra antenna or other options, managed to access a gateway at some 3 km distance.

Pricewise it was appealing for me, then. Noticed prices tripled since then…

1 Like
23

nice, and what about the lora chip, which one did you use?

24

i watched Andreas Spiess video comparing TTGO with Heltec, and the results wasn’t quite good for heltec, poor antenna. but in general it’s a decent board.
did you have a look at the new heltec board “cube cell”, it uses SX1262.

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25

I have a question. does all end node support any LoRaWAN class (A, B or C), i didn’t thought about this before because i thought and still think it’s a software side. i mean i know what are they but some Boards specification keep saying (support class A, class A stack included etc) what do they mean??

26

Without any context and figures that is a nonsense statement.

1 Like
27

That is a general statement which does not hold.
Be specific.
What MCU, board models and which versions?
What antenna, LoRaWAN, WiFi, both?

Also the LoRaWAN antenna’s for these boards are all external, connected either via UFL/IPEX or SMA connector.

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28

Some additional information for ESP32 boards can be found here:
Is there a ESP32 LoRaWAN board for battery operation?

29

heltec V1 and it uses the UFL antenna for LoRa, if someone want to use that board it’s better to change to SMA antenna or buy another UFA antenna, (better one)

30

If you are not sure about which board then better not post statements about it because they may very well be incorrect.

What antenna are you talking about. An external antenna provided with the board?
What type of antenna? Coil antenna with UFL connector only or antenna with SMA connector connected via UFL to SMA cable? 868MHz?

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31

To all responders in this thread:

  • Please be specific and complete.
  • Specify at least manufacturer board model and version.
  • Don’t generalize based on experience with only one or two boards.
  • Don’t compare apples with oranges.
1 Like
32

i just edit the post and this is the link where i have found the information: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CJNq2I_PDHQ

33

and i do appreciate if you could correct my information and my statements since i’m still trying to discover LoRa boards/modules and things get a little bit confusing in my head right now. and every thing become questionable.

34

That video is more than 2 years old.
In the meantime newer models have been released.

TTGO boards mostly use HPDTek LoRa modules on their boards so presumably RF performance/properties will not have changed much on newer versions of their boards.

Heltec has improved the radio circuitry on their Heltec WiFi LoRa 32 V2 so its RF performance should have improved (I have no references for measurements/comparison).

1 Like
35

If you are looking for advice for board selection then, like @kersing already mentioned, I would like to advise you to list your requirements first.

What are you looking for?
What do you want to achieve?

36

thanks for this information. for the last couple days i watched a video about cubecell, and it wasn’t bad, i can see the improvement (link https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lobNwqHLrag) and what i wasn’t sure about is the documentation and the software support for the SX126x, is it available (because the only library i have found is this one https://github.com/Lora-net/LoRaMac-node, beside the example from heltec), to be honest with you, i don’t like this kind of questions because i do like to test things by myself, but i can’t just buy something i’m not sure about. i do like to have a good idea about what i’m buying and what is the limits and what problems i may face. so i hope you can answer my question kindly XD.
and about what the project i’m going to do, as i said before, it not clear for now, but in general it will be reading measurement from sensors (degital sensors) and just send the data to the server, which is basically like any other simple project with lora.