I spent several weeks evaluating options and really wanted to use LoRa for controlling some stuff in a detached machine shop, but I just couldn’t find reasonably priced sensors, switches, and gateways (or access points or whatever you call them in LoRa parlance). I seem to recall that one of the major integrations was cloud-polling only which was a huge no-go (same reason I didn’t buy in heavily into Yolink, I require 100% local control).
Do you use LoRa? I’d love to hear what you use (brands and vendors to buy stuff from) if so. I try to have at least two different technologies controlling an area. That way, my zwave-js-ui pod occasionally shitting the bed won’t completely break an area.
I’ve used the Heltec Lora v2 and v3 which are ESP32 devices and you can put ESPhome on them. The V2 are delicate little things and I’m pretty sure they’re static sensitive, so if you get anything, get the V3. Of course, when they went V2 to V3, they didn’t keep it pin compatible because fuck me, I guess. But I fixed that and now I’m on V3 devices. You can put an external 9 or 13 dBi gain antenna on these and I’ve gotten a few miles with them, LOS. I use these on pumping systems to communicate between the trough and pump on long pasture cattle watering lines.
If I want to go longer range or have some trees in the way, I’ve been using ebyte E32 standalone (UART) radios. You can get 25 miles out of those with good direction YAGI antennas, as they can run at 1W. I have an amateur radio license so I’m legal to use that power if I don’t encrypt it, which is fine because all I’m doing with it is sending telemetry (gates, pumps, temperature) on the farm or between equipment for RTK correction on my AgOpenGPS units.
I’d be more inclined to trust LoRa for anything that needs that sort of distance.
I spent several weeks evaluating options and really wanted to use LoRa for controlling some stuff in a detached machine shop, but I just couldn’t find reasonably priced sensors, switches, and gateways (or access points or whatever you call them in LoRa parlance). I seem to recall that one of the major integrations was cloud-polling only which was a huge no-go (same reason I didn’t buy in heavily into Yolink, I require 100% local control).
Do you use LoRa? I’d love to hear what you use (brands and vendors to buy stuff from) if so. I try to have at least two different technologies controlling an area. That way, my zwave-js-ui pod occasionally shitting the bed won’t completely break an area.
I’ve used the Heltec Lora v2 and v3 which are ESP32 devices and you can put ESPhome on them. The V2 are delicate little things and I’m pretty sure they’re static sensitive, so if you get anything, get the V3. Of course, when they went V2 to V3, they didn’t keep it pin compatible because fuck me, I guess. But I fixed that and now I’m on V3 devices. You can put an external 9 or 13 dBi gain antenna on these and I’ve gotten a few miles with them, LOS. I use these on pumping systems to communicate between the trough and pump on long pasture cattle watering lines.
If I want to go longer range or have some trees in the way, I’ve been using ebyte E32 standalone (UART) radios. You can get 25 miles out of those with good direction YAGI antennas, as they can run at 1W. I have an amateur radio license so I’m legal to use that power if I don’t encrypt it, which is fine because all I’m doing with it is sending telemetry (gates, pumps, temperature) on the farm or between equipment for RTK correction on my AgOpenGPS units.