what if I told you that you could do Ethernet over LoRA?
GitHub - datapartyjs/lorapipe

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GitHub

APRS also Just Worksℒ️

first: pic APRSIS32 + Windows 11 + https://store.rakwireless.com/products/rak4631-lpwan-node

second pic: Xastir + Fedora + https://www.seeedstudio.com/Wio-SX1262-with-XIAO-ESP32S3-p-5982.html

this demonstration was at very close range (~10m) using close to the fastest LoRA preset possible using this hardware: Bandwidth 500KHz, Spreading Factor 5, Coding Rate 5 (4 is less redundant, therefore faster)

Here's another fun little demo. L2 AX25 over LoRA using kissattach and the Linux kernal AX25 implementation. IP working over AX25:
We decided to change lorapipe's name to MeshTNC to de-conflict it from other similarly named projects, as well as to make the name more descriptive of what it does.

A MeshCore community member is working on this Python implementation of MeshCore for Linux. It works by controlling a directly connected SPI radio (sx12xx chip)

There's a core parsing library: https://github.com/rightup/pyMC_core/

And a repeater implementation, with an extremely slick UI: https://github.com/rightup/pyMC_Repeater

It will soon support using MeshTNC radios connected over USB via KISS mode!

I ported MeshTNC (along with a significant portion of Meshcore's HAL) to Linux and Windows! πŸ‘€

Work in progress still. I haven't pushed the code yet. The radio wrapper is just some stubs right now, but I'm planning on adding SPI radio support soon.

@meph whoa! what kind of speeds after you seeing? limited to 115200 baud?
@Viss @nullagent and I were seeing about 12Kbit/s with iperf3, but we think that we can improve the throughput with a little bit of work.
@meph @nullagent ive fallen heavily into home assistant land, and HA recently released a zwave doodad that can talk... basically usb over wifi or PoE, and like.. extending a zwave mesh over lora sounds sexy as fuck, and thats even before talking about the possibility of pushing still images from security cams over lora point to point mode. good work, man! super keen to see where this goes!

@meph @nullagent put this lil guy on the end of lorapipe and 12kb/s is plenty fast enough to extend a zwave network off grid using lorapipe :D

https://fosstodon.org/@homeassistant/115368397463400875

Home Assistant (@[email protected])

When we launched the Connect ZWA-2, one point of feedback was clear: people want flexibility in where they could place it. Message received. 😎 Introducing Portable Z-Wave, an experimental firmware that lets you use Z-Wave over the built-in Wi-Fi or add on PoE! πŸš€ Learn how it works πŸ‘‡πŸΌ https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/10/13/portable-z-wave-with-wifi-and-poe/ #ZWave #SmartHome #HomeAutomation #OpenSource https://www.home-assistant.io/blog/2025/10/13/portable-z-wave-with-wifi-and-poe/

Fosstodon

@Viss @meph On a SF12 message, at 256 bytes, witbout any LoRa framing, you get about 5 seconds of airtime. That's about 50Bps or 0.05KBps.

You can go faster, each lower spreading factor is twice as fast, and has a shorter range.

SF < 7 is experimental IIRC.

@yo3gnd @meph yeah for my use case scenario im trying to smash as much bandwidth possible over not too great a distance. maybe a block or two. like, lets fill the gap between too far for wifi and needs an lte radio. think of something like a nice axis camera on a solar panel and an outdoor zwave pir sensor. like a trailcam on steroids but without all the shady chinese lte backhauls or pesky verizon sneakybullshits or stingray planes/vans

@Viss @yo3gnd check out WiFi HaLow, RAK has some chips that support HaLow for a good price, check here: https://store.rakwireless.com/products/choose-other-wireless-module-with-wisgate-connect?variant=42432936804550

There's another outfit named Teledatics that has some HaLow hardware, but their website seems to be having some issues.

In the one very suboptimal test of HaLow that I did, I was able to get a couple Mbps around 2 city blocks away from the 900MHz HaLow AP, which was suboptimally placed indoors and near ground level.

Wireless Modules for the WisGate Connect

@meph @yo3gnd sweet! thanks for the intel!

That's correct, not all LoRa modules can go below SF7. We did our testing with nodes that can do SF5 and it seemed to work very well. FSK modulation is also a bit faster than LoRa so there's some gains to supporting it.

This below calculator appears accurate with our testing.

We have not tried 2.4GHz LoRa yet, which also has some bandwidth benefits, I think it might already work, we just don't have hw to test on.

https://unsigned.io/understanding-lora-parameters/

@yo3gnd @Viss @meph

LoRa bitrate calculator and understanding LoRa parameters

It can be pretty useful to know how LoRa parameters influence data rate and range, for example when configuring your RNode. In this post I'll go over the basic concepts needed to understand the different LoRa parameters, and how they affect range and data rate.

@Viss @meph Well, that is interesting for sure!
@Viss @meph Hmm, where is X.25 fit into that kind of stack πŸ€”. Could be fun to plug in all the existing software stack.
@ai6yr @meph HA has released hardware that extends zwave meshing over ethernet or wifi :D
@ai6yr @Viss lorapipe turns a microcontroller+lora radio (basically anything that meshcore supports) into a serial attached KISS TNC so you can just kissattach it to a linux kernel and you get AX.25 out of the box.
@meph @Viss Maybe I should load meshcore on this other LoRa board I have. Don't know if there are any Meshcore nodes in radio range here, but definitely could be fun.

@ai6yr there's a large meshcore network in the pacific northwest. Users in Seattle WA, and Vancouver BC are regularly able to have conversations with one another. A group of users is currently working on trying to link up the Portland OR meshcore mesh to Seattle and Vancouver!

The mesh up here seems to have settled on a USA "Narrow" preset: BW62.5KHz, SF7, Frequency 910.525

@ai6yr @Viss

golaypipe turns a samd21 microcontroller + rfm12 radio into an usb ethernet adapter working out of the box *SCNR* https://github.com/DO3RB/WirelessNetworkTransceiver .

@bernerd @ai6yr oh shit? ... are those stackable? could you shotgun two and double up the link?
@Viss the firmware handles only one radio at a time. you can build two and set them to different enough frequencies or one 433 and one 868. then eth bonding :D