I am doing a project where I need to transmit from an ESP8266 module to a router from any two locations inside a house.
Using some sort of antenna or other booster, not oriented in a specific direction, is it possible to transmit through multiple walls inside for a range of 75 meters? The ESP doesn't have to receive from the router at all, only transmit to it. I am assuming the router quality is an average household router, which can't be modified.
edit: I've said ESP here because that's what I've researched so far, but I'm open to any solutions to this problem
A constraint for the project is to be self-contained, so a repeater is out of the question unfortunately.
Does a cell phone have similar transmitting and receiving capabilities to the ESP? I am new to the ESP and WiFi connectivity in general. I was thinking that even if a vanilla ESP module couldn't handle the distance, some modification could make it powerful enough, which you couldn't do with a cellphone/laptop.
It's impossible to predict if it will work. Walls and 2.4Ghz won't play well together.
If a laptop won't work at that distance, then an ESP most likely also won't work.
Leo..
If anyone has advice on boosting some basic WiFi module like the ESP, I would be very interested to hear.
From my research, it seems like it is possible to get a small module to transmit strongly enough to get through a house using an antenna. I am concerned that the router I'm connecting to won't be strong enough to transmit back to the WiFi module though.
You might be able to increase transmit/receive distance with a directional aerial.
Some ESP modules have a connector for that (ESP-07).
But you told that was not an option (post#0).
Leo..
There are ESP modules that have a connection for an external antenna. One of those would be a good start.
And for repeater, I have a second router for that job in my home where walls prevent signals from getting to a room that's barely 5 meters from my primary router, basically using a detour now.
75 meters is quite far for WiFi, especially with walls in between I would expect it to not work - but of course your walls may be more transparent than mine, so do go and try it out.
Is your project required to stick within legal WiFi transmit power limits?
If so then using directional antennas will quite likely exceed those limits. The WiFi police won't break your door down, but if this is a student project you may have a hard time explaining to your supervisor how your system works whilst remaining legal.
Or look into LoRa. It does go through walls, especially if you're lucky and live in a place where you can use the 433 MHz or even lower frequency bands.
@mikb55
In terms of legal limits, I of course don't want the device to break those. However, the nature of the project is that the only necessary communication between the device and the router is the device has to send a single boolean value, open or closed, once per day. My intuition about this is that if the limit is stretched, just for the span of a second, it won't cause too much interruption. However, I don't know much about the regulations and would be very interested in hearing your opinion about sending just a single value at a very high power.
My ideal case would be some sort of general direction amplifier for the receiving and transmitting of the ESP.
@wvmarle
I've looked into LoRa a bit, and this seems like a potential good solution. If the device only worked in Toronto (Canada) that would be not ideal, but an allowable workaround to this challenge. There doesn't seem to be a ton of information about it on Google, so if you know of any great resources explaining it I'd be glad to hear about them.
edit: I've done a bit more research into LoRa, and it's not widespread enough for this project. The device has to work in any typical house in Toronto. Probably in a few years it will be perfect.
@Wawa
A directional antenna is very undesirable for this project, since I want the device to be mounted on a box, with everything in a static position. So the only directional changing you could do is spin about one axis by spinning the box, which would only work in a limited number of cases.
user987:
edit: I've done a bit more research into LoRa, and it's not widespread enough for this project. The device has to work in any typical house in Toronto. Probably in a few years it will be perfect.
I don't see the problem. LoRa is primarily a peer to peer protocol, sending messages from one device to another, which it seems is what you're after. It's not something that's being rolled out or so, like SigFox.
user987:
I don't know much about the regulations and would be very interested in hearing your opinion about sending just a single value at a very high power.
If you exceed the legal power limit, then its been exceeded.
user987:
edit: I've done a bit more research into LoRa, and it's not widespread enough for this project. The device has to work in any typical house in Toronto. Probably in a few years it will be perfect.
Then do some more research and you will find that LoRa is basically a very long distance node to node protocol, it does not need any external infrastructure to make it work.
It will work just fine in a house in Toronto or in the remotest areas of the world, low cost too.
Are you talking about going from the module to another LoRa station, and the LoRa station to a router? Unfortunately, this won't work with the constraint of my project, which is to only have my single remote module connect to a typical router anywhere in a house. Unless I'm misunderstanding you, and you're saying somehow a LoRa-using device could connect to a typical router, which I don't see as possible.
If there was widespread LoRa connectivity throughout my region, and I didn't need my own intermediate station, it would be perfect. Unfortunately, there are only 4 stations in my region, which doesn't offer nearly enough coverage. So in order to use LoRa I would have to use my own LoRa to WiFi bridge as a second standalone device.
It looks like I'll have to look into making the strongest legal, non-directional WiFi pulse from my module in order to fulfill all the constraints of the project. Hopefully it will be strong enough to permeate a typical house.
It seems you're mixing up LoRa and LoRaWAN. Different technologies, though they can do the same thing.
WiFi is not going to penetrate more than a wall or two (especially if it's a proper stone wall), nor much in the way of trees or so. 75 meters that's out of the house - somewhere deep in a huge garden. No matter what it's not going to be a simple plug and play kind of installation with WiFi, you may get it to work by doing a survey of the place, then finding the best spots for the router and the least obstructed line to where you can place your sensor node, and hope for the best.
LoRa will by and large just work for that distance. Indeed you will need a second node - is that really a problem? An ESP8266 + LoRa module makes for a great gateway while costing far less than USD 10 to build, and can cover a radius of several km in an urban environment.
By now I think it's very much time you start to tell more about the project: what is it about, what are you sensing. 75 meters distance and "a typical home" also don't seem to go together well, as most homes are maybe 10 meters side to side, and gardens also not usually reaching those measurements.
user987:
It looks like I'll have to look into making the strongest legal, non-directional WiFi pulse from my module in order to fulfill all the constraints of the project. Hopefully it will be strong enough to permeate a typical house.
WiFi is necessarily bidirectional signalling, that is, the link must be closed in both directions for it to work, so a higher powered transmitter on only one side doesn't really help1.
Antenna gain is different in that the antenna gain applies to both both transmit and receive.
1 - Assuming the receiver sensitivity is the same on both nodes.
wvmarle:
It seems you're mixing up LoRa and LoRaWAN. Different technologies, though they can do the same thing.
OP is definetly confusing them
An ESP8266 + LoRa module makes for a great gateway while costing far less than USD 10 to build, and can cover a radius of several km in an urban environment.
And there are now several plug in ESP32 modules (inc Wifi and Bluetooth) that have built in LoRa devices and OLED displays. Add an antenna and battery and your good to go.
