If anyone is interested in deploying their own “outdoor” or “remote” LoRA digirepeater or iGate as Matthew has done, I now have a number of “kit of parts” available. There are two kits available for remote locations, one which takes a 10W Solar panel from eco-worthy, and the other a 25W solar panel; again from eco-worthy. Both can take three 3000mAh 18650 Li-ion cells and come with 3D printed brackets to attach the nodes to a 1" or 1.5" (diameter) aluminium fixture (from CPC). There is also one available for home use, where a DC (12V to 24V) feed is available (i.e there is no need for the Li-ion cells or Solar Panel). Below are the two nodes under test in my garden (much to my wife’s disapproval):
1. LoRA APRS node (IGate or digirepeater) with three 18650 Li-Ion cells and a 25W PV Panel from Eco-worthy (MB7UWS-2)
The kits come either completely built, or as individual parts. If you are interested in a full kit, just the PCBs, the 3D printed brackets or anything else then please message me. These are the same nodes that James (M7SDO), Matthew (M0MZB), John (G3GWV) and Richard (G3CWI) have recently deployed (or are in the process of) here in the U.K. I have recently been given permission to install an iGate on the roof of Bowland tower at Lancaster University, which should give great coverage across Morecambe bay up towards the Lakes District, the Forest of Bowland and the Fylde. I’ll be installing this as soon as I can.
The nodes have been designed to try and encourage people to start putting up LoRA APRS nodes, so the cost of the parts are as cheap as I can possibly get them. Where possible the design has used parts that are easily sourced. The IP67 enclosure, the EU433 colinear antenna, the PV brackets are all available from either Aliexpress, Amazon or CPC. The only parts that are custom are the PCBs but I’m happy to make these available at cost.
If people are interested, I’d be happy to put up a page on the new LoRA APRS Wiki that Richard has setup on how to build one, and where to source all the parts.
Finding G3SMT’s approximate location from qrz.com on an OS map shows he is on high ground of 300m or more. So, plugging in antenna heights of 300m and 841m (for G/LD-010) into an online RF line-of-sight calculator gives a range of 191km so it wouldn’t have needed any form of scatter.
Ah…living about 1000ft (in old money) ASL makes a difference.
EDIT: One of the reasons I was interested was if the motion of the aircraft would produce Doppler on the signal that would smear the spreading of the LoRa modulation.
His IGate is usually the first to pick up my tracker (heading up Winter Hill), ever since I started playing with LoRa last September. It’s very reliable too - I can only recall one occasion when it was down, but it came back on when he reset it (after I’d emailed him).
Yes quite pleased with that. One of my objectives was to ensure I could be picked up by GI4SXF so that there is some redundancy if my own igate goes down.
This was supposed to be only a test site.Final deployment is 300m higher. However, I have already had problems with the power supply. For the last few days the site has been shrouded in mist, and was running out of energy at about 3am each morning.
This morning (photo below), I added an extra cell (now three 18650s); optimised the solar panel orientation; and switched-off the display. I suspect I will struggle to keep it operational 24hrs a day based on current operating experience.
Would be interested to learn of any lower power consumption alternatives to the Heltec V3
On the original ESP32s you could put the processor into deep sleep for a set time to save some power. You could add some code to do this from say 1am for 5 hours when there is less activity.
I have a widget here where it goes to sleep for 15 minutes, wakes up, refreshes an e-ink display with the latest weather (and upcoming bin collection), then goes back to sleep. An 800mAh cell lasts about 2 weeks that way.
Have you set the display to ‘eco’ mode so it turns off after a few seconds to save power?
