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BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

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Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#31

Post by chocrates »

api wrote: post #29
syntaxing wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It sucks how everything feels like a toy. I think meshtastic is the closest thing to a “product”. They made a bunch of bad architectural decisions that are haunting them now like how nodes broadcast its info.

It doesn't surprise me. This is a deep networking problem and very few CS people know anything about networking or how to design clean, fast, low-overhead network protocols and systems. If IP were designed today the packets would have 500+ bytes of plain text JSON as headers and the spec would support hundreds of extensions.

Is there a better designed mesh project like those two getting built that you know of? Reticulum?

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#32

Post by chocrates »

refulgentis wrote: post #30
syntaxing wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing it’s just haloW without the licensing requirements.

Gonna reply here, but this isn't about you or this post: HN has a lot of us that have ~0 idea what you'd use this for, even when we steelman, all we can do is vaguely handwave about easier to setup wireless internet on a vast compound we own. Would be really cool if someone could hop in and just give a couple one off examples, i guess? Only other one handwave I can think of is IOT x assembly line stuff for businesses…

Assuming you mean mesh in general: Meshtastic like projects

- emergency communication

- low power data transfer for sensors

- low data rate data transfer for mobile groups. Air softers use it to transmit information to each other while playing.

HaLow:

- "high" data rate over shorter range, though much higher range than 2.4 wifi - data sharing between mobile groups like above, but high enough bandwidth for low quality video

- large area wifi deployments

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#33

Post by wtallis »

AlphaWeaver wrote: post #22

The "100x bandwidth" claim needs to be substantiated. There are some significant regulatory issues with the current popular mesh network protocols in the USA, namely that neither MeshCore or Meshtastic are compliant with the actual FCC regulations. 100x bandwidth because you're breaking the rules isn't the same as 100x bandwidth legally. Here is the issue discussing this in the MeshCore repository: https://github.com…

The issue you linked to is about MeshCore using channels that are too narrow. A mesh system claiming to offer 100x bandwidth is probably not violating regulations in that particular way.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#34

Post by the__alchemist »

How are they increasing the bandwidth? It's a hardware limitation of the radios. Even if you run the lowest spread factor (SF) and highest bandwidth setting on the radio, it's still not great. And the radio buffer is 255 bytes. I'm also curious why they're starting a new project with the SX1276 instead of SX1262.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#35

Post by kanbankaren »

jtchang wrote: post #11

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the primary appeal of LoRa was range? Also isn't the primary factor in making long range radio go through things is the frequency? So 2.4ghz is the same frequency as consumer wifi right and thus would propagate about the same right? It doesn't seem like this would be that useful except that the protocol is LoRa so you can have higher bandwidth between two devices if they happen…

> would propagate about the same right?

No. Free space loss increases with frequency.

FSP loss for 915 MHz at 10 kms is ~ -111.67 dB while for 2.4 GHz is -120 dB.

That is a 9 dB loss which is significant. It could mean the difference between a copy or just plain static though the LoRa is supposed to be copyable down to -140 dBm.

The max tx power is around 150 mW (21.76 dBm), so at 10 kms, the RSSI is 21.76-120 = -98.24 dBm which is above the -140 dBm limit.

This calculation is assuming there is no loss due to vegetation or humidity or other barriers.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#36

Post by nunobrito »

wtallis wrote: post #33
AlphaWeaver wrote: post #22

The "100x bandwidth" claim needs to be substantiated. There are some significant regulatory issues with the current popular mesh network protocols in the USA, namely that neither MeshCore or Meshtastic are compliant with the actual FCC regulations. 100x bandwidth because you're breaking the rules isn't the same as 100x bandwidth legally. Here is the issue discussing this in the MeshCore repository: https://github.com…

The issue you linked to is about MeshCore using channels that are too narrow . A mesh system claiming to offer 100x bandwidth is probably not violating regulations in that particular way.

There are more rules being broken. For example, overusing the frequency which effectively prevents others users from sending messages.

In the end, won't be used.

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#37

Post by dheera »

mikeweiss wrote: post #23
jtchang wrote: post #11

Correct me if I am wrong but I thought the primary appeal of LoRa was range? Also isn't the primary factor in making long range radio go through things is the frequency? So 2.4ghz is the same frequency as consumer wifi right and thus would propagate about the same right? It doesn't seem like this would be that useful except that the protocol is LoRa so you can have higher bandwidth between two devices if they happen…

LoRa would go much farther than Wifi on 2.4ghz. Lora uses Chirp Spread Spectrum (CSS) modulation while wifi uses OFDM (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing). The first being designed for extreme range while the latter for bandwidth. At 2.4ghz you could probably get LoRa connections up to 6 miles with the right antenna height.

Just use Unifi Airfiber for 6 miles at gigabit speeds. If you're relying on line of sight then 2.4GHz is nonsense.

And if you don't have line of sight then no you're not getting 6 miles

Re: BYOMesh – New LoRa mesh radio offers 100x the bandwidth

#38

Post by nunobrito »

refulgentis wrote: post #30
syntaxing wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I’m guessing it’s just haloW without the licensing requirements.

Gonna reply here, but this isn't about you or this post: HN has a lot of us that have ~0 idea what you'd use this for, even when we steelman, all we can do is vaguely handwave about easier to setup wireless internet on a vast compound we own. Would be really cool if someone could hop in and just give a couple one off examples, i guess? Only other one handwave I can think of is IOT x assembly line stuff for businesses…

You'll read a lot of illusions and wishful intentions.

In the end: LoRa is only good for very short text messages at somewhat long distance (up to 10km without special setup) and without bad conditions (obstacles on line of sight, rain/fog). There is an ongoing fight between each of the two frequencies to be used as default and this publication adds another frequency into the battle.

There is WiFi HaLow, a relatively new WiFi protocol which seems to solve the low bandwidth issues with LoRa on relatively confortable distance (likely up to 8km, same as with LoRa in regards to Line of Sight), albeit slightly less affected by weather conditions. The advantage here is permitting to send images and binary data in general, but think about something being sent at the speed levels from 2005 (which in any case is good speed for most usable things).

Then there are other relevant mesh protocols yet to mention here like ESPnow which is my personal favorite. Whereas the other two options above are exotic and with transceivers around the 50 EUR and above. With ESPnow you just need any cheap ESP32 embedded device with an optional antenna to increase range for about 3 EUR (antenna included). With that you get similar returns to WiFi HaLow with less range (about 3 kilometers max on my experiments) but cheap like heck.

To setup internet on a vast compound, WiFi HaLow might be a good investment. If you are with a constrained budget, then ESP32 is your friend. To remember, long distance is limited so if you are considering more than 8 devices exchanging heavy data, you should just go for proper WiFi long range transmitters.

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