Small LoRaWAN nodes

Sorry to hear that, please get well soon. Here is a pint of Guiness to get you back on your feet. :slight_smile:

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I have some experience with LiPo’s and charging and if you buy a LiPo, be sure that it has PCM (Protect Circuit Module) inside.
My favorite ’ LiPo shop and ‘trusted’ source.

To charge them I use normally these little 'modules

another possibility to feed a low power thingy are rechargeable coin cells eg LIR 2450 - 3.6v 120 mA
(carefull, they are a litlle bit bigger than the 2032 in your PC)

together with the special size 'button cell pcb holder they work great for low power electronics.
to charge them outside your circuit use something like this
or you can use a ‘tweaked’ eBay charge module (replace a resistor)

(thank you Terrence :smile: )

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That explains the difference then. I use special lipo chargers and before this I only used LiPos on systems with low voltage warnings, that’s why I never bought one of those.
Thanks for the link! It may just come in handy later.

My first prototype, with Atmega328p, was inspired from Moteino. After all, i’ve changed the complete design I started with. The only feature left is that’s about the same size :smile:
There’s no charging or protection circuit. I’m planning to add this in the next version, if you know some good and compact circuits you can always suggest these.

@BoRRoZ
About lipo, did you noticed any problem using them outside at low temp? Felix from lowpowerlabs told me some months ago he had problem with them at temperature below 0°C, they simply shut down.

@eTh0maz
Excellent design, would you share your Antenna SMA-UFL library (if it’s done with eaglecad)? I can do it, but your is perfect, and sharing will bring me some more time to do other interesting stuff :wink:

By the way I made a RN2483 shield for WeMos ESP8266, works great so far.


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Hi Charles,

No, I didn’t know that, I’ve made several projects that are powered with lipo’s and placed in the open, but they are build inside waterproof project boxes and I always ‘tape’ the lipo’s, never had complaints, maybe lucky. :sunglasses:

But good to know, I’ll have to investigate this , will put a fully charged LiPo in my freezer !

nice pcb !

@BoRRoZ
Thanks, Oh, good idea, will be nice to know your tests results with lipo in the freezer :wink:

About the LiPo temperature: This is true. Cold LiPos perform terribly. When we are in situations where we need a lot of power from a LiPo, for instance when flying a drone, LiPo temperatures below 14 DegC are a big no. We then use special heater boxes or store them in a warm car or other warm place before use.
I suppose for low power requirements like nodes the tolerances are a lot bigger but I would not be surprised if you see an effect.

That (nice) circuit board says “Lora Gateway”. Does that imply you used an RN4283 as a single channel gateway? Some would love that. Or should it actually say “LoRaWAN Node”?

@arjanvanb
Well, sorry about that, in fact I designed some gateways for other projects with other modules mainly RFM12/69 and done this one for testing before I learnt that RN2483 as a gateway is very complicated :grin:

Yeah, it’s more a LoraWan node :wink: but may be it’s possible to do a gateway with this other design which use classic hopef RF95/96/98 module footprint. I’m pretty new on LoraWan, so sorry about my noob design.

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Looks interesting but seems to use way to much power (80mA?).
I could not find any hint how to put it into low power modes in the NavSpark forums.

TvB Board with RFM95W (fixed connections), running LMIC1.5, BMP280 (druck & temp); HTU21D (temp & humidity); 1000mA LiPo, deep sleep for 5 min LowPower).
Looking forward how long the battery holds…

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me too … nice job !

Not as small as some project here, there is also the “Mini Ultra Pro”, from RocketScream (who wrote the LowPower lib for Arduino):

http://www.rocketscream.com/blog/product/mini-ultra-pro-with-radio/

With bigger CPU, battery management and small memory.

Problem is pricing :smile:

@jym that one would be nice with a RN2483 and a RGB led for signalling

Not original, but they remain cute.

The reason I post it is that they are far easier to build than I expected. So I hope to encourage others who just like me initially thought this is to difficult to get assembled without much experience. For the future i’ll bend the wire in advance and I’ll make the VCC and GND wires longer to simplify power supply and sensor attachment.

Oh. And detach led and regulator in advance because that got pretty impossible once assembled…

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@jym
I’ve got RocketScream they rocks I love it, price $22 for a SAMD chip with battery management and power optimization is not “so much”, same as as MoteinoMega that does not have lipo charger, but yes you need to add RFM95

By the way I’ve got unexpected reset on Pro Mini using LMIC do you have the same issue? Looks below, I’m monitoring Frame Count of device counter and as you can see on Both Pro Mini, it reset very often and my others nodes have no problem.


Right now on my desk, Size 14 by 22 mm.

http://www.miromico.ch/fmlora.html

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Looks Nice!!!
Any documentation ? I can’t see any wiring, user manual or whatever?

This chip does CPU and Lora it’s just a Lora chip we need to interface with CPU?

Seems there are two versions, one with a STM32L151 with the open source LoRaWAN stack and another just SX1276.

Looks nice, but seeing their other prices I’d guess >€30