Category Archives: LoRa

LoRaWan Single Channel Gateway

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I wanted to explore whether a simple ESP32 could be used to build a LoRaWAN gateway.

To be clear from the start, the goal is not to replace a proper LoRaWAN gateway with an ESP32. Such a setup comes with significant limitations: the ESP32-based gateway will only be able to listen on a single channel. This makes it unsuitable for deploying an actual LoRaWAN network, especially when compared with standard gateways capable of listening simultaneously on multiple channels and spreading factors.

Still, there are situations where such a limited gateway can be useful.

The most obvious one is a home or lab environment. If you have an ESP32-based device that you want to connect to LoRaWAN but do not have a gateway available, building a simple single-channel gateway can be an inexpensive way to get started.

My interest, however, is also in a slightly more professional use case. Within an existing fleet of LoRaWAN devices, there may be a few devices located outside the current coverage area, or devices experiencing persistent coverage issues. Deploying an additional full LoRaWAN gateway to cover only a handful of devices can be relatively expensive and may be difficult to justify or to deploy with B2C products like smart home appliances.

In that situation, a small ESP32-based gateway could provide an interesting temporary solution. It may also be more practical than introducing LoRaWAN relays, considering that relay support and deployment models are still not as mature as conventional gateway-based architectures.

I therefore see this approach primarily as a lightweight or transitional solution: something that can provide local connectivity for a limited number of devices without requiring the immediate deployment of another full-featured gateway.

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MeshCore, the new Kid on the LoRa Mesh Block

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A while ago, I wrote about Meshtastic. At the time, Meshtastic was the thing everyone was talking about: tens of thousands of nodes sold, many products packaged by HELTEC, LILYGO, RAK, and Seeed Studio, and a large international community building a LoRa-based mesh network for long-range communication.

But Meshtastic was yesterday’s trend. Today, the new momentum is around MeshCore, with a significant part of the community migrating to it, especially because the required hardware platforms are largely the same. However, as we will see, MeshCore and Meshtastic are not the same thing. They are not really meant to replace each other, except perhaps for specific use cases where Meshtastic was not particularly well suited and where MeshCore provides more appropriate solutions.

This article introduces MeshCore from a technical and operational point of view, to help clarify what it is and how it works.

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EchoStar IoT – the geostationary LoRaWan solution for Europe

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In previous blog posts, I introduced you to satellite-based IoT through technologies like Kinéis and Astrocast. Both of these solutions rely on constellations of satellites, typically in polar rotation around earth and low Earth orbits (LEO), which allow for global coverage—but at the cost of latency due to satellite revisit times.

This time, I want to highlight a different approach to satellite IoT: a solution called EchoStar IoT, which I had the opportunity to explore hands-on by developing a compatible device.

What sets EchoStar apart is its use of geostationary satellite technology. This means the satellite remains fixed relative to a specific area on Earth, continuously covering the same geographical zone. As a result, there is no satellite pass delay—connectivity is constant within the coverage footprint.

However, this also implies a trade-off: a single geostationary satellite cannot provide global coverage. As of today, EchoStar IoT services are available across most of Europe, parts of North Africa, and the entire Mediterranean region.

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Critical Analysis of the Meshtastic Protocol

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Meshtastic is a mesh protocol (peer-to-peer, network by proximity) based on LoRa technology. LoRa is not LoRaWan, just as WiFi is not IP. It is therefore possible to use LoRa for networks without infrastructure.

Meshtastic was designed for communication outside of any public infrastructure, with a survivalist spirit of autonomous and (more or less) secure communication.

Due to its structure, it is difficult to estimate the size of such a community, but the map seems to indicate that more than 10,000 nodes are currently active. However, it seems that there are actually around 40,000 active nodes, with strong participation from the global ham radio community. In practice, the network is composed of clusters of nodes communicating locally with each other and expanding as clusters become visible to one another. In reality, without linking infrastructure, it won’t be possible to connect from one cluster to another but some MQTT relay features exists.

The use and development of the network require very few resources, as simple DIY nodes based on widely available devkits, such as the T-beam, are sufficient. The user interface works via a mobile application interacting through Bluetooth. The investment is just a few dozen euros. In a previous Meshtastic blog post, I detailed its implementation with small LoRa modules.

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Meshtastic another way to use LoRa

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You may be familiar with LoRa, not that girl, but the LOng RAnge communication solution that is used for long-distance, low-power point-to-point communications. It was invented by the Grenoble-based company Cycleo in 2009 and later sold to the semiconductor giant Semtech.

You might have heard more about it in its usage with an infrastructured network: LoRaWan, which allows public or private networks to connect thousands of sensors. In this blog post, I am going to talk about another implementation of LoRa, this time in a mesh architecture named Meshtastic. Multiple mesh, LoRa based solution are rising, this is one of them.

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The Hidden Side of LoRa

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While I was working on a blog post about Meshtastic (which will be online soon), I started questioning the time on air in a non-LoRaWAN context, where the online simulators I usually use did not work. This led me to investigate the LoRa frame format (not LoRaWAN, just LoRa, the underlying layer), and to confront the “sync word”, the functioning of a chirp… a whole range of concepts for which I expected to find abundant documentation. After all, in the LoRaWAN world, the open nature of the technology has been emphasized since its inception. However, after quite a bit of research, I still remain somewhat uncertain about the basic workings of LoRa, which at the very least calls for a blog post to compile the information I have found.

I invite those with a solid understanding of the subject to enrich this post with comments, and I will incorporate the key elements accordingly.

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Kerlink Wirnet iZeptoCell

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Kerlink iZepToCell

The new baby in Kerlink family has arrived, it’s iZeptoCell ! Ok, I’m a bit late to write this blog post and it came alive a couple of months ago. When I say baby, I really mean baby, no due to its age but more related to its size !

This LoRaWan gateway is really small and can take place in any indoor environment looking like a sensor but providing a wide range connectivity for many devices deploy around. This is a really good option to cover a small / medium company floor up to a building.

This gateway exists with an Ethernet connectivity like the one I’m testing and with a Cellular connectivity, something appreciated when corporate IT dislike having devices on the corporate network.

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Arduino LoRaWan board MKR1310 (also MKR1300)

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The Arduino board MKR1310 is the new revision of the MKR1300 board dedicated to LoRaWan. This board is a SAMD21 Arduino board with a Murata ABZ module based on a STM32 with an SX1276 transceiver. Basically a bit outdated and expensive modem now.

After using this board for some teaching project, it’s a good time to make a feedback about it as many things need to be improved on that board to get benefit of it.

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