Category Archives: LoRa

Sniff Your Local LoRa Packets

Posted on August 23, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

As the LoRa low-bandwidth networking technology in license-free spectrum has gained traction on the wave of IoT frenzy, LoRa networks have started to appear in all sorts of unexpected places. Sometimes they are open networks such as The Things Network, other times they are commercially available networks, and then, of course, there are entirely private LoRa installations.

If you are interested in using LoRa on a particular site, it’s an interesting exercise to find out what LoRa traffic already exists, and to that end [Joe Broxson] has put together a useful little device. Hardware wise it’s an Adafruit Cortex M0 …read more

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Posted in Adafruit Feather, cortex m0, Feather, LoRa, radio hacks | Leave a comment

ISM Communications for Arduino

Posted on July 9, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

If you want to wirelessly communicate between devices, WiFi and Bluetooth are obvious choices. But there’s also the ISM (industrial, scientific, and medical) band that you use. There are inexpensive modules like the SX1278 that can handle this for you using LoRa modulation, but they haven’t been handy to use with an Arduino. [Jan] noticed the same thing and set out to build a shield that allowed an Arduino to communicate using LoRa. You can find the design data on GitHub. [Jan] calls it the LoRenz shield.

According to [Jan], the boards cost about $20 to $30 each to make, …read more

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Posted in Arduino Hacks, ISM, ISM band, ISM radio, LoRa, sx1278, wireless, wireless hacks | Leave a comment

CES17: Arduino Unveils LoRa Modules For The Internet Of Things

Posted on January 6, 2017 by Fernando Gomes

WiFi and Bluetooth were never meant to be the radios used by a billion Internet of Things hats, umbrellas, irrigation systems, or any other device that makes a worldwide network of things interesting. The best radio for IoT is something lightweight which operates in the sub-Gigahertz range, doesn’t need a lot of bandwidth, and doesn’t suck down the power like WiFi. For the last few years, a new low-power wireless communication standard has been coming on the scene, and now this protocol — LoRa — will soon be available in an Arduino form factor.

The Primo, and NRF

It’s not …read more

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Posted in arduino, Arduino Hacks, Arduino Primo, ces, CES2017, LoRa, MyDevices, news, nRF52832, Primo Core | Leave a comment

Building A LoRa PHY With SDR

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Fernando Gomes

The Internet of Things is terrible when it’s your toaster. The real fun happens when you have hundreds or thousands of sensors sending data back to a base station every day. That requires low power, and that means LPWAN, the Low Power Wide Area Network.

There are a lot of options for LPWAN, but few are a perfect fit. LoRa is one of the rare exceptions, offering years of operation on a single AA cell, and range measured in miles. Layers two and three of LoRa are available as public documentation, but until now layer one has been patented and …read more

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Posted in LoRa, low power, LPWAN, sdr, software-defined radio, wireless hacks | Leave a comment