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LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

blog.beepnetworks.com

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Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#21

Post by elcritch »

PaulHoule wrote: post #12
HorizonXP wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rural areas would generally be much better due to the lower number of objects in the way. Now, that will give you less options for bouncing signals, but supposedly, you can achieve ~13 miles with line of sight.

My rural area (the northern frontier of Appalachian mountain range) doesn't have long lines of sight. Around here the high points are around 2000 ft above sea level and most of the population is in a network of valleys that dissect what would otherwise be a plane. Hilltops are wooded too (even on the many hills named "Bald Hill") so you have to add another 40 ft to your tower just to look into two adjacent valleys. I…

Ideally these would be mesh networking and cheap enough to place in several spots on a ranch or farm. This way you could place half a dozen and get full coverage easily. Alas, I've read too many of the IoT radios of late and am not sure if the beep kits are mesh enabled.

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#22

Post by mhb_eng »

PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I'd like to see how it does in rural areas. There's a gap in the market for GPS horse trackers because you can't count on any particular communications network, unless you use licensed amateur radio APRS.

I'd be interested in near-shore(a few miles out and cell service is unusable/you don't have a high thoroughput requirement). There are plenty of "nearish" ocean applications that could benefit from an extended range without requiring iridium(where packet costs can be a killer).

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#23

Post by phurley »

It does not look like your target market, but I imagine this would be ideal for pet/valuable tracking. Put it in a collar or bike seat and if your fido goes for a stroll and does not come back you can search much faster with an easy drive down the road. Same thing to help find a stolen bike.

If the transmitter could be inductively charged in a dog crate or where I park my bike -- it would be very convenient too. Ping time could be much slower, even once a minute would be plenty fast. Appears you could get 24 hours transmit and gps without too much trouble in a pretty small package.

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#24

Post by dbrgn »

To see more coverage tests with heterogenous devices on the things network (https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/), see http://ttnmapper.org/.

The most interesting place to see is in the Netherlands, followed by the Zürich area in Switzerland.

In my experience it's easy to get miles of range when you have line of sight. Just look at the measurement from nearby Lucerne to Zürich (Switzerland). That's around 50-60km. If you have buildings in the way, things get tougher. Putting up gateways high on the roof helps.

The Things Network Forum (https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/) is always a good place to talk about these things.

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#25

Post by slewis »

mhb_eng wrote: post #22
PaulHoule wrote: post #3

I'd like to see how it does in rural areas. There's a gap in the market for GPS horse trackers because you can't count on any particular communications network, unless you use licensed amateur radio APRS.

I'd be interested in near-shore(a few miles out and cell service is unusable/you don't have a high thoroughput requirement). There are plenty of "nearish" ocean applications that could benefit from an extended range without requiring iridium(where packet costs can be a killer).

Shawn from Beep here. These use-cases sound really interesting. Send me an email? shawn at beepnetworks dot com

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#26

Post by ac29 »

thelambentonion wrote: post #4
gp10 wrote: post #2

I wonder what the frequency of operation is -- 315, 433 or 869 MHz?

915 MHz in the US. EDIT: Actually I suppose since it isn't LoRaWAN, it could be 433 MHz.

433MHz isn't unlicensed spectrum in the US, its in an amateur radio band. Wouldn't be legal for commercial use like this.

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#28

Post by ismail »

slewis wrote: post #25
mhb_eng wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd be interested in near-shore(a few miles out and cell service is unusable/you don't have a high thoroughput requirement). There are plenty of "nearish" ocean applications that could benefit from an extended range without requiring iridium(where packet costs can be a killer).

Shawn from Beep here. These use-cases sound really interesting. Send me an email? shawn at beepnetworks dot com

Hey what are your thoughts on sigfox? They got an investment from Samsung who are apparently integrating into their devices. Will this play out like vhs vs betamax?

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#29

Post by matt_knight »

Shameless plug: Have a look at my GNURadio OOT transceiver if you're interested in LoRa and SDR. https://github.com/BastilleResearch/gr-lora

Here is a summary of my black box/blind signal analysis that informed its design. https://github.com/matt-knight/research/tree/master/2016_08_...

Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco

#30

Post by blhack »

As somebody working in the IoT space (specifically telemedicine), Lora is the technology that excites me the most. It really does sound like a magic bullet that really actually does solve a lot of real connectivity problems.

Go beep!

BTW, so, uh...hey beep, wanna sponsor a hackathon for this stuff this spring?

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