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How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

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Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#2

Post by th0ma5 »

Lower power, but highly processed radio signals are fascinating to me. I've been playing with WSPR on the 10 meter band which is fixing (hopefully) to open up a little here over the next couple of months. With about 1/10th of the power of my Wi-Fi router and a long wire over top of the house, I've been picked up so far this year in California from Ohio. Last year I was heard almost daily in Europe. A blogger I follow with a bit more power but still less than a watt has been heard on several continents almost every other day from the UK.

Anyway, signals are a function of time as well as bandwidth, and with more precise clocks in our devices and higher CPU power to make sense of it, it is an exciting time live and see what's next.

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#5

Post by upofadown »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #4

Would this open possibilities for a direct machine to machine network that didn't go over the internet? (I.e. could I set up something to ssh to my home server from my laptop without needing wifi/cellular coverage?

The data rate is really low. So maybe, if you are patient and are not much more than a mile from home.

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#7

Post by olympus »

jws wrote: post #3

I'm intrigued. Anyone want to suggest an economical development board or transceiver?

Like the author mentioned, these are new-ish/emerging standards and there isn't a de-facto board like Arduino just yet. Therefore it's kind of hard to recommend a board that I know has a ton of documentation and a big community.

However, if you are the adventurous type and don't mind working with unpolished libraries and figuring things out from function descriptions, there are tons of smaller people putting out boards on Tindie: https://www.tindie.com/

Tindie has a few LoRa boards, some with built in antennas and some without: https://www.tindie.com/products/DORJI_COM/long-range-semtech...

But bottom line is that this tech isn't (yet) popular enough to try without getting a little dirty. If you can afford a bigger battery, try 900 MHz Xbee transmitters for an easy to interface serial with long range.

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#9

Post by olympus »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #4

Would this open possibilities for a direct machine to machine network that didn't go over the internet? (I.e. could I set up something to ssh to my home server from my laptop without needing wifi/cellular coverage?

Sure, you can hook up a low power serial transmitter to a Raspberry Pi's UART and have a text only console to operate over. But you are pretty much limited to text only and very slow file transer over a serial transmission like Kermit or Xmodem. You'll hate it for the type of computing you're used to. If you want a graphical remote desktop you are better off setting up a WiFi router/WLAN and connecting through a remote desktop connection. This will consume much more battery life, but I power a WiFi router with an RC LiPo battery and a voltage regulator and it lasts for several hours (but you certainly aren't getting days of battery life).

Re: How New Long-Range Radios Will Change the Internet of Things

#10

Post by IshKebab »

JupiterMoon wrote: post #4

Would this open possibilities for a direct machine to machine network that didn't go over the internet? (I.e. could I set up something to ssh to my home server from my laptop without needing wifi/cellular coverage?

No, they're extremely slow.
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