Which node board is easy to get?

I bought the device Things Indoor Gateway (915), now I need several nodes to test with.

Which boards are the most common? I will go with those for now as support is easiest to find for them.

Where are you? Where can you buy from? Do you want to program this node? Which Microcontrollers do you have experience of?

Toronto area.
Open to working with any microcontroller.

Some applications I have in mind are for asset tracking so tiniest board would be best.
Other applications will involve installing LoRa inside a vehicle where it would communicate via WiFi/BT and be controlled by a Arduino or R-Pi

None of them. But for an easy entry into LoRaWAN you can get a Heltec CubeCell. Sufficient memory for the LoRaWAN stack and Arduino compatible.

Digi-key,Mouse, and the usual big sellers available in USA I can buy from.

I’d respectfully suggest just focusing on getting something working that you are comfortable with the development ecosystem.

Look at what Amazon can ship you and tell us, we can then suggest something.

But Adafruit Feather seems a good start and programable via Arduino.

That most definitely does not fit the most common boards, but pycom devices might be a good fit.

With asset tracking I assume you will need the board to have GPS integrated?

Do your applications need to be battery self-powered and hence low-power?

There currently are no (dev)boards that satisfy all of the following properties in one single board:

  • battery powered, true (ultra) low-power.
  • LoRa(WAN)
  • GPS
  • WiFi
  • Bluetooth
  • Small, compact size

Depending on your requirements and budget some boards will be more suitable than others and most will probably not be suitable at all.

Assuming you will be using a microcontroller based solution (not RPi):
For WiFi an ESP32 will be most suitable.
For Bluetooth nRF52 or ESP32 depending on your requirements.
For GPS there are several options but again depends on your requirements.

Without very clear requirements (for each type of application) it will be difficult to come up with good suggestions for suitable boards.

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I would not suggest a Pycom (ESP32) board for Arduino framework / C++ based development because there is hardly support for that.

The OP has yet to tell us what his experience level is - meeting all the nice to have requirements on the first project strikes me as a recipe for some long winded forum based debugging!

Knowing exact requirements will help steer communication.

I did not read that all nice to haves should be satisfied in the first project.

I have no problem with long winded forum based debugging, as long as this is done mainly in the OP’s time, searching and reading all relevant information and debugging tips already available on the forum. :clown_face:


The topic title is little representative for the actual question(s) and ‘easy to get’ is quite subjective.
For me ordering some board on AliExpress satifies ‘easy to get’. That it will not be delivered directly the next day is a different aspect.

Isn’t that what much of the forum is about? :wink:

That is at least what large part of the (new) user population appears to expect. :grin:

Neither would I, but the OP didn’t state Arduino/C/C++ for the node, just that it should be controlled by Arduino or RPi. That leaves it open to interpretation whether the node should be programmable with Arduino/C/C++ or needs to interface with it.