LoraWAN: Extremely long range, low power wireless communication

Internet of Things, one of the best buzzwords of 2017 and a source of endless amusement when products that have worked for hundreds of years suddenly start asking for your Wi Fi password. But what if a thing suddenly had kilometers of wireless range and years of battery life at the same time? That would be the end of the mockery, wouldn't it? Well, the hardware in front of me wants to make that possible. This starter pack comes from the German company magics. It consists of a matchbox gateway in an outdoor enclosure, and sort of a pre production matchstick sensor module. Equipped with a GPS receiver and an angry led this thing might look like an ordinary Wi Fi access point, and it actually has one built in, but most prominently it's a low power wide area network gateway. It speaks Laura one that's a relatively new wireless technology designed specifically for low bitrate, but long range and low power applications. It's a big deal with a promising future because it's supported by an alliance of some of the most influential companies in the industry. And even the guy with a Swiss accent seems to like it. He has made some detailed videos on how it works and how to set it up manually. There's more match x system doesn't need set up, but it has a bit of DIY potential anyway, open WRT in the gateway Need I say more. But before looking at that aspect, I want to show you the plug and play experience that's pre programmed into the system. You only have to provide power and an internet connection via Ethernet, Wi Fi client, or USB host then these devices will automatically recognize each other and the angry red flashing will become much more friendly. In this demo scenario, GPS and sensor data is transmitted to the gateway via Laura and to the magic X Server via internet Their ads available from an mq TT broker or their web interface which is already prepared to display GPS data. For a first test, I'll just leave the gateway on my desk and take the sensor with me to the supermarket. In spite of the terrible placement it managed to call home in the bottled water department a few hundred meters away but it didn't quite make it all the way to the toilet paper. So clearly we've got to work on that gateway placement. It seems like height is the most important variable. Luckily the gateway isn't that heavy and I did have some aluminium tubing lying around. But that wasn't strong enough for an antenna mast so I went to the hardware store and bought more Three of those pipes should be good enough for the rough German weather, right it's another makeshift solution at best. But I think for a quick demonstration in this video it should be good enough I may have underestimated the influence of the cable. Ham Radio people will be laughing at the setup and its range. But everyone who grew up with one of these that barely made it through a wall will understand why I'm positively blown away by the fact that I'm getting a stable connection home from outside of town. And it just keeps going. No problem. The dogs are benefiting tool extended walkies. I'm nowhere near the 20 kilometer range from the spec sheet of course, more like two kilometres, but I didn't think my five minute antenna would make this possible. Alright, it's getting a bit late we are going back home. The data I've generated is neatly presented by the metrics web interface. But for an actual application, one would program something that listens to the mq TT broker. That also has to be used if you want to send data to a device. A device like a Laura we know for example, that's not a magics product one can tell by the lacking snappiness of the name, but like every other Laura product, it's compatible, so I can now control servo motors kilometres away Finally, setting this up was a bit inconvenient Because I had to base 64 encode the command before sending it only to tediously recovered in the Laura vino program. But it's all still new and I'm sure it'll get better as soon as more users embrace this technology. I already like it a lot and I will try to make a smaller long range GPS doc tracker with it and it definitely can be a lot smaller. The stick is mostly battery. But the idea is great. They are planning to make interchangeable sensor tips, GPS, temperature, movement, and so on. I'm not going to try and take apart the gateway because the enclosure is ultra sonic welded and internal photos are available in the FCC database already. But it's Definitely an awesome product because of open WRT you can reconfigure it to do whatever you want.

Channel: Marco Reps

Views: 544,909

Keywords: lora, lorawan, matchx, berlin, wifi, range, iot, internet, of, things, esp8266, esp32, arduino, lorauino, electronics, soldering, antenna, pole, mast, cable, poe, product, review, kilometers, miles, power, low, unboxing, teardown, outdoor, sensor, gps, data, access, point, openwrt, gateway, technology, bitrate, throughput, alliance, setup, diy, router, package, plug, ethernet, client, usb, host, rgb, servo, demo, cloud, mqtt, raspberry, pi, raspi, stick, supermarket, base64, sketch, fcc, dogs, matchbox, matchstick, 3d, printing, temperature, open, source

Id: 7n8t62anxIQ

Length: 6min 27sec (387 seconds)

Published: Fri Dec 29 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/otakugrey]

This is fucking cool, but where has to be a simple consumer level USB plug and play lora transceiver to buy in order for people to start developing for it. Once that happens chat networks and social networks can be built on top of it.

[u/Pokaw0]

Are there any open alternatives to LoRa yet?

[u/m0le]

Sadly, it's 2 years on from release and there are actually less Match X products available (so not only no replaceable tips, but apparently no match sensor at all any more).

I've also not heard anything further about LoraWAN really.

[u/BubbhaDunkh]

Whatever happened to 802.22?

https://www.markramseymedia.com/2011/08/new-wi-fi-has-a-range-of-62-miles-yes-really/

[u/mud_tug]

Point to point links have up to 100Mb/s at the same range.

Marco Reps is a cool guy btw, subscribe to his channel.

[u/Protagonistics]

Yeah good luck getting it to work. We messed with it on and off for a year and it was impenetrably dense.

[u/Scissorhands_Igloo]

The headline is misleading. There are two families of LoRa modems. The first is SX127x and its data rate is 32kbps and lower. For it to reach over 1km on 100mW, the data rate must be lowered to < 2400bps. The really long data links have data rates < 200bps.

The second family, SX128x, has a higher data rate and operates in the noisy 2.4 GHz band. I don't know much about it, except that othernet uses it.

[u/Jcw122]

Is anyone here using this? I think the primary application is IOT but it doesn't seem to be very common at all.