Advice for Arduino Mesh Network (LoRa or FSK) with Repeaters and Gateway – No Manual Config

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1

Hello,

I'm working on a wireless sensor network project using Arduino-compatible boards.

The setup includes:

  • Many transmitter nodes read ambient temperature every 15 minutes and broadcast the data.
  • Repeater nodes that rebroadcast the data or forward it toward a central gateway, using a simple mesh/flooding topology.

Project Goals:

  • Avoid RF collisions
  • Achieve 99%+ reliable data delivery
  • Ensure the system is simple to deploy with no manual configuration

I would appreciate advice on the following:

  1. Which wireless technology is best for this setup?

    • LoRa (e.g., SX1278)
    • Sub-1 GHz FSK (e.g., RFM69)
    • Others?

  2. Are there any Arduino libraries or example projects that support mesh networking, flooding, or collision avoidance (like TDMA or CSMA)?

  3. Hardware recommendations:

    • Transceiver modules (e.g., SX1276, RFM95, etc.)
    • Best antennas for long-range, reliable transmission
    • Low-power boards (e.g., STM32WL, ATmega + LoRa, ESP32 with external radios)

If anyone has experience with self-healing mesh or slot-based scheduling using Arduino and LoRa/FSK, I would really appreciate your input.

Thanks in advance!

Best regards,
Amar

2

The RadioHead library implements self-organizing mesh networks. This is a good tutorial to start learning about how to use it:

Impossible, as radio is inherently unreliable, nodes and power fail, interference crops up, etc.

3

What kind of range are we talking about?

4

Not all transmissions sent will be received, thats an RF fact of life.

If very high levels of reliability are needed then you need a mesh that allows the original transmitter of a data packet to know that the final destination has not received it, so the transmitter can send the packet again.

5

Thats a question with a lot of answers, depending on the actual environment amongst others.

What is you experience of things RF ?