Shameless plug.
I am working as consultant for a startup building a backend for LoRa devices. If you have any question from the backend software point of view feel free to write me :)
email in the profile.
LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
31–40 of 65 posts
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#32I find this technology incredibly exciting. I'm waiting until cell phones use it in conjunction with mesh networks to create wide adhoc networks in places without cell service. There's some fun app ideas there.
Unfortunately the spectrum that's available for this type of thing varies significantly country-by-country, so it's unlikely to be added to a major phone maker.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#33It 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…
Seems like the police could bait bikes with this technology to make a serious dent on bike theft in their city.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#34I'm rural and have a lot of things sending data to a central node for collection. I found LoRa interesting, but sadly none of the modules offered native encryption capabilities. Ended up using RFM69HW modules with AES128 in the same band and still get pretty good range, up to a mile+ NLoS (but not through 300m hills either..)
I imagine the low throughput of LoRa would make encryption a greater challenge than with other modules, but maybe there are other reasons for that.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#35I'm rural and have a lot of things sending data to a central node for collection. I found LoRa interesting, but sadly none of the modules offered native encryption capabilities. Ended up using RFM69HW modules with AES128 in the same band and still get pretty good range, up to a mile+ NLoS (but not through 300m hills either..) I imagine the low throughput of LoRa would make encryption a greater challenge than with oth…
Some of the modules have dedicated native encryption coprocessors such as the Laird RM186 - it's still easy enough to shoot your toe off though. I would argue there is negligible benefit for an encryption coprocessor (it's usually just AES ECB anyway) - you're either better off using a software implementation of ChaCha20/Poly1305 or a dedicated TPM.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I am highly skeptical of mesh networks.
Maintaining one radio is one thing, maintaining ten of them is another. Each one has a battery to worry about as well, can go bad, can be misconfigured, etc. Whereas if I have one radio on the roof my house or barn there is less to go wrong.
There is also no promise adding more nodes to a mesh network will improve performance since the nodes can interfere with each other. There is a huge literature on mesh networks because the area gets huge amount of military funding, and maybe the military really can use them, but I think they are a solution looking for a problem in an environment where people act as if wires were ritually unclean.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#37Shameless plug. I am working as consultant for a startup building a backend for LoRa devices. If you have any question from the backend software point of view feel free to write me :) email in the profile.
How does this sort of tech handle large scale use? Living in an apartment where all but one corner is in range of 60+ traditional access points has been a huge pain for my connectivity. I can only imagine it would be worse when you're in range of everybody in miles.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
I am highly skeptical of mesh networks. Maintaining one radio is one thing, maintaining ten of them is another. Each one has a battery to worry about as well, can go bad, can be misconfigured, etc. Whereas if I have one radio on the roof my house or barn there is less to go wrong. There is also no promise adding more nodes to a mesh network will improve performance since the nodes can interfere with each other. There…
Your skepticism around deploying lots of hardware vs one central transmitter is valid. But I'm kind of confused by your comment about wires. It sounds like you're implying that a wired network will somehow make the equipment attached to it more reliable.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#39What's the throughput like for LoRa?
0.3 kbps to 50 kbps is what they advertise.
Re: LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
I am highly skeptical of mesh networks. Maintaining one radio is one thing, maintaining ten of them is another. Each one has a battery to worry about as well, can go bad, can be misconfigured, etc. Whereas if I have one radio on the roof my house or barn there is less to go wrong. There is also no promise adding more nodes to a mesh network will improve performance since the nodes can interfere with each other. There…
Your skepticism around deploying lots of hardware vs one central transmitter is valid. But I'm kind of confused by your comment about wires. It sounds like you're implying that a wired network will somehow make the equipment attached to it more reliable.
@whoa generally wired networks have been preferred in most industrial-scale sensor networks to ensure reliable connectivity. Until very recently I wouldn't have even considered doing an active control network over a wireless network. But recent IoT hardware and mesh networks have gotten surprisingly good!
@PaulHoule those are some good points. I would've agreed up until recently, but the newer IoT mesh radios have gotten surprisingly robust. The frequency modulators and collision detection baked into the last few iterations of lower cost IoT chips (like DigiMesh/Nordic chips) really have improved. We've been using DigiMesh 900 MHz units in a greenhouse setting with great success (especially compared to 2.4GHz which drops packets with abandon), with no measured packet loss to date. Pretty sweet!
To wrap that up, low-throughput but hi-scalability mesh networks combined with better firmware, network configuration, tuned mesh protocols, and proper software support to make the "throw a few of these down and forget them" scenario a real possibility. Check out the Beep networks blog for a longer explanation: http://blog.beepnetworks.com/2016/09/messy-networks-for-the-...