Tag Archives: LoRaWAN

LoRaWan one-channel, Heltec solution

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While researching my previous article on how a Single Channel LoRaWAN gateway works, I came across an interesting solution developed by Heltec. Their approach consists of reusing the enclosure and potentially some of the hardware of a small environmental sensor, which already integrates most of the components required to build a Single Channel gateway. They may have adapted or simplified the original hardware to create this dedicated product.

What makes this solution particularly interesting is its price and form factor. At less than $20, it is extremely affordable and compact. Compared to the development boards I used in my previous experiments, it also offers a much cleaner and more professional design, making it better suited for actual deployments rather than just laboratory testing.

I contacted Heltec to purchase one of these devices, but they explained that the product was not currently commercially available. Fortunately, they still had a few units in stock and kindly agreed to send me some samples.

My next step is therefore to deploy the LonaWan Single Channel gateway solution on this device and evaluate how well it performs. Given its low cost, compact size, and installation-friendly design, it looks like a particularly promising platform for the use case I am exploring.

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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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The End of IoT Platforms — Why the Future Is the IoT ERP

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IoT platforms emerged early in the history of IoT, arguably too early. At the time, the industry was driven by momentum and the urgency to provide ready-to-use solutions.

Over the past decade, however, many of these platforms have been discontinued, transformed, or fundamentally redesigned. This evolution is not accidental; it reflects a deeper structural issue in how the first generation of IoT platforms was conceived.

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Milesight People Counting solutions

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For one of my clients, I had the opportunity to test several different people-counting solutions. Our requirement was for a system capable of communicating independently from the company network, such as through LoRaWAN, while also being available for purchase in single units. I turned to Milesight products, as the company offers a fairly broad range of sensors in this field. From a mechanical and hardware perspective, the sensors are generally of good quality. However, as we have seen, their performance in counting people varies greatly depending on the detection method used.

The entry-level sensors are very affordable, but the more advanced models—those based on image analysis with AI—quickly become much more expensive. Depending on the use case, each type of sensor addresses different needs, making it important to balance precision requirements against budget constraints.

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The Things Conference 2025: A Decade of Growth and a Shift Toward Diversity in IoT

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TheThingsConference took place once again in Amsterdam, marking what should have been its 8th edition. This year, however, the event carried a special significance: it celebrated the 10-year anniversary of TheThingsNetwork, now a yearly reference point for IoT professionals.

Traditionally, the conference has been strongly oriented toward the LoRaWan ecosystem, providing a deep dive into the technical and industrial advances surrounding it. But this year marked a shift. The organizers deliberately chose to broaden the scope, opening the stage to a wider range of IoT technologies and ecosystems. The result was an edition that felt more diverse, more dynamic, and undeniably more engaging.

With a larger audience and a wider array of perspectives, this year’s sessions offered a rich mix of technical depth and ecosystem insights. For me, the event was not only about the talks themselves, but also about taking a step back to reflect on the IoT market as a whole: how it has evolved over the past year, where it seems to be heading, and what genuinely new ideas and technologies are emerging.

As usual, this article is my way of revisiting those two intense days—sharing my key takeaways, my impressions of the conference, and my thoughts on the shifting landscape of IoT.

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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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Abeeway 1WL devkit with Murata LBEU5ZZ1WL all in one tracking module

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The Abeeway 1WL development kit is dedicated to geolocation through various means such as GPS, GPS sniffing, WiFi sniffing, radio triangulation, BLE sniffing…, using the different components of the Murata LBEU5ZZ1 SiP module and Actility’s ThingPark geolocation platform, which gives meaning to the raw listening data. Abeeway is a key player in fleet tracking solutions, providing both a business platform and hardware solutions for this purpose.

Through Actility/Abeeway, I was able to obtain an evaluation kit whose main goal is to simplify access to these multiple geolocation technologies for the rapid development of customized tracking solutions.

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