I’m considering buying two MKR WAN 1310 units but would like some practical feedback on effective connection ranges.
Here’s my situation… I live way off grid and my cabin is located about 1,800 feet from my well shed and pump. Everything is solar/battery powered.
I was going to run coax between the two locations, and then use Ethernet to coax adaptors to provide connectivity so I can remotely start and stop the well pump as needed to fill a 5,000 gallon tank that feeds the cabin.
But, I’ve been playing around with ESP32/LoRa devices and think I could potentially use the MKR 1310 devices to send a signal back and forth to trigger a relay that would start/stop the pump.
The ESP32/LoRa devices don’t have enough power to signal that far (still testing and trying though) but maybe the Arduino 1310s could.
Anyone have any real world experience with their peer-to-peer range before I spend the money?
If you have a permanently pressurized system (30/50 PSI) you can install a pressure switch at the well that automatically turns the pump on when the pressure drops due to water demand at the tank. No Arduino required,
Whether the LoRa device has the range rather depends on the LoRa settings in use.
The LoRa devices used in the TTGO ESP32 devices and Arduino 1310 are the same so the range will be the same.
As for you application you say 1,800 feet and that is well within the capability of LoRa, although the environement and what in the way between TX and RX is critical, but you did not say.
Unfortunately, I don't have clear LOS. The well is about 1,200 ft away and about 260 in elevation below the cabin (now that I've used Google Earth to validate). There are pinion pine trees between the two points (not dense, but still enough) and the elevation drop is due to the side of a mountain that curves enough that I can't see the well directly from the cabin.
I'd say if I elevated the cabin device may 15 feet up I'd clear the trees and be pretty close to line of site. I intend to put the well device antenna elevated on top of the well shed, and put the cabin device elevated on top of the cabin. That should make it very close to sign of site, at least that's the plan.
I'll use the two ESP32 Lora devices to test using a couple of high gain antennas and see how they work, but I'm hoping a couple of 1310s will do better. There are solar based large batteries at both sites so powering them isn't an issue.
The well pipe line doesn't follow the straight line path shown in the picture and is about 1,800. I was going to run the coax line beside the pipe line, but if the 1310s work that would save me a LOT of money. On the other hand, if I run the coax to ethernet line I'd have full high speed connectivity. I may do both...
The other option I'm looking at is using a pair of Ubiquiti Litebeam network dishes to see if I can get a signal between the two sites. I use pairs of them now to push high speed internet connectivity between the cabin (where I have StarLink) and my workshop (building on the right in the image). That works very well with the link supporting 500mb speeds. But without line of site from the cabinet the well, I'm not sure if the signal will be strong enough to "bend" over the hump in the mountain between the two sites. I don't want to have to put up a solar/battery repeater in the middle, as I get a lot of snow here and I'd be dealing with that all the time...ugh...maybe I'll just blast the side to the mountain off for better line of site...
Do you get any speed during a snow storm? Except for snow, you can use a plane reflector to go around corners. Works very well for microwave installations.
I’ve ordered two 1310s to text with. I already have a couple of extra higher gain antennas…so if I get connectivity I can potentially build out an mount them on top of the two structures to get a solid signal.
And think about it, if you configured the LoRa devices appropriatly for long distance mode, you might not need the potentially expensive and illegal high gain antennas or power amplifiers etc.........
So I’ve tried to find an end user friendly guide on how to set the various parameters for LoRa node to node communications with no luck. Does someone know of a decent tutorial or guide on what the various option are to optimize settings for a specific use-case? I’m at a loss…
