Hello, I am looking for Arduino or compatible board and LoRaWAN hardware. My area (Finland) has a LoRaWAN net.
Can anyone recommend a small size Arduino & a compatible LoRaWAN shield.
this is how I see it: Arduinos are, at best, a VW Golf. most of them are more like a 1500 cc aircooled beetle. great for learning on, but with low limitations.
Example: if you put a Dragino LoRaShield on an UNO, you are left with 7 Analog In pins and three data pins. If you use those three data pins for a GPS and its associated PPS, you are left with 7 pins. the only use I have found for my Dragino LoRaShield is a way to put a continuous stream of GPS data on the air, to see if the Dragino LoRaHAT receives it.
the only use I have found for the Dragino LoRaHAT is a target for a pellet gun. it's about the size of a mouse, if you hit it in the middle you might be able to cap a household pest. not one working gateway program on the ninnynet, among the dozen or so out there.
you could put it on a MEGA, but then you add the cost of a MEGA and a Dragino LoRaShield, you could buy 3 ESP32s with a built in ( unusable, if you remember watching The Lone Ranger on saturday morning ) OLED, RTC, SD card socket, & a LoRa transceiver. the thing about LoRa; you need two ( node and gateway ) for verification and testing before you go live.
by comparison, the ESP32 is a grand touring car with a 5.4 liter V8. vastly more capable.
Thanks for the input. ESP32 looks good. If I buy from Aliexpress should they work also in European LoRAWAN operators?
I am going to write about my very limited experience with ESP32s later today. They will work fine. the trick is in getting the library to use your countries RF settings. most ESP32 how-to-make-it-go writeups are written for the EU 868 mhz bands, so that is a layer of aggravation you won't have to deal with.
New Mexico has 93% of Finlands area, has the highest PhD per population in America - 1 PhD per 350 people, is home to dozens of research facilities - not one LoRaWAN gateway in the state.
One thing that I am not sure about. There are many ESP32 models sold at Aliexpress with unit price 3-4 USD. Are this compatible with LoRaWan or can they just connect to WiFi?
I also see "ESP32 LoRa" models sold for 10-15 USD which have antennas etc.
ESP32 alone works only in 2.4GHz band, they can connecto in WiFi or Bluetooth.
Edit: maybe some LoRa modules doesn't work with LoRaWan, they works each other, but I am not sure.
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