LoRa is the new hotness in low-power, long-range communications. Wanting to let the packets fly, [Xose] was faced with a frequecny problem and ended up developing a Europe-friendly LoRa module for the M5Stack system. The hardware is aimed at getting onto The Things Network, a LoRa based network that provides connectivity for IoT devices. While there was an existing M5Stack module for LoRa, it only supported 433 MHz. Since [Xose] is in Europe, an 868 MHz or 915 MHz radio was needed. To solve this, a custom board was built to connect the HopeRF RFM69 series of modules to the M5Stack.
If you haven’t heard of it before, the M5Stack platform is a stackable development board platform. Like Arduino, you can add functionality by stacking PCBs using a standard header. Unlike Arduino, M5Stack fits in a case nicely and is designed for building devices with user interfaces. For $35, you get an ESP32 based system with WiFi, Bluetooth, a color LCD, battery, buttons, a speaker, and IO connectors.
With the hardware in place, [Xose] 3D printed a custom case to hold the board and added it to the stack. The firmware acts as a monitor for The Things Network, showing live coverage. The final product looks very clean for a prototype, maintaining the finished look of M5Stack.
The firmware, board design, and case design files for the project are all available on Github.
RFM96. An RFM69 would be of little use in a LoRa project ;-)
A fixed ISM frequency is not the only regional problem with this M5Stack. The only cellar module is a SIM800 (GPRS) which isn’t supported anymore on most of the planet. Most places are LTE now.
Lovely, there’s not a gateway miles close to me. Although I imagine Lora within a city wouldn’t be as useful (not to mention cities already are WiFi saturated). The Adafrut Feather M0 LoRa boards are suppose to be popular in the US.
433MHz is for EU already. It is just that TTN uses 868MHz for their network. Nothing would stop you from deploying a 433MHz gateway and using it.