Sensor Kit #2 : why is it not available?

New line of radio chips (SX126x) are more power efficient than old ones (SX127x). Also they have higher sensitivity, as well as transceiver power and link budget. SX126x series can use frequency hopping which was not possible in SX127x series.

Just to share my maybe outdated experience with TTN. In 2019 I bought a cheap Draghino gateway and Heltec boards but I couldn’t get it working. Last year I took up the project once more and noticed that the Draghino gateway was not supported anymore so I bought a more expensive Mikrotik gateway. I got it working with the Heltec boards but the signal strength was just very poor. I really had to keep the heltec boards in a range of 3 meters to keep it working. I found that others had the same issue. The documentation from Heltec was also poor so I decided to look for another board with better support and documentation from an established manufacturer. I checked development boards from NXP and Texas Instruments. Both don’t provide support for LoraWan. Then I checked STMicro. They announced the Nucleo WL55JC with LoraWan support beginning of 2020 but it’s still not in production STM32WL and the NUCLEO-WL55JC1 - Hardware - The Things Network
I hope you guys will get it working and then I will for sure implement it but my experience is that it’s not that easy as it seems like.

I got MikroTik gateway on my roof. And use Heltec boards all the time. Range is usually couple km at SF8.

I now see that Heltec released a large amount of newer boards so the issue was probably caused by my setup or old board.
I assume you want to implement LoraWan functionality because of the power consumption and distance but I wonder if it’s worth the effort to implement and support it? How many people will actually use it? Will it not ignore the goals of having a cheap and easy DIY solution? Are other technologies like Wifi AX with ‘Target Wake Time’ and mesh functionality not better and easier to maintain, support and implement?
If I look back I’d rather would have spend the time and money on a meshed WiFi network within my house than on a TTN gateway to use a network I don’t have control over and don’t have professional support for but that’s just my situation and thoughts.

@Lodie the goal is the support of TheThingsNetwork. This is available in many cities, while wifi connectivity through a wall is sometimes a problem. And this modules are much cheaper than a(nother) wifi repeater :wink:

For sure I understand your thoughts and I hope it works out well. I just wanted to share my thoughts :slight_smile:

I’ve had another look at my TTN gateway, changed the internal antenna to an external antenna that came with one of the Heltec boards and now it seems to cover over more than 5km. The Heltec boards seems to do better as well. I can place it at the back of my garden. So it was my setup :slightly_smiling_face:
TTNmapper also shows better coverage so it seems promising and if you need somebody for testing, just let me know.

ps. If TTN is not sufficient than you might have a look at https://www.chirpstack.io/