「ʀᴏʙᴇʀᴛ」It's amazing by the way that you can buy an ESP32S3 with a LoRa (SX1262) shield for just €9, and it even comes with 2.4Ghz and 868Mhz antennas 🤩
#homeautomation #homeassistant #esphome #meshtastic #meshcore
thomas@robertklep what is a LoRa shield and why would you need one?
@systemsobscure LoRa is a long-range, low-power radio protocol. I'm using it as a backup in case the Internet connection of the terminal goes down; in that case, alarm signals will still be broadcast around the neighbourhood. My (very rudimentary) tests show that with the setup I'm using, I get a range of about 300 to 500 meters, which is enough for my project.
@robertklep Apols for not being clearer, I know what LoRa is. I was wondering about the shield part. Looks like it's just a breakout board for LoRa on another device like Arduino?
@systemsobscure Similar to RPi shields, the LoRa board and the ESP board have a dedicated connector so you can piggyback the LoRa part on top of the ESP part. I think it's a rather nice solution, better than having to use pin headers (more compact).
Only too bad that the ESP board comes with pin headers soldered on, I’d rather make that choice myself.
@systemsobscure also, not necessarily relevant for my project, but the ESP board has battery charging management onboard, so together with some deep sleep solution this could be a nice and compact LoRa sensor board.
@robertklep Nice, I will be following this project with interest
@robertklep Ah that's really cool and useful to know. I would've gone for something like a Heltec but that's much more compact.
@systemsobscure yeah I also have a few Heltec devices, but only with display, which I don't need so they just take up space 😅