RAKwireless on Nico Maas

RAK3172T in Arduino

Sun, 17 Nov 2024 13:00:09 +0000

Updated on 2024-12-01 with latest fixes of STM32LoRaWAN v0.3.0

As the RAK11300 did not really match my requirements (it uses way too much energy), I looked further and found the RAK3172 which is based on an STM32WLE5CCU6 - an STM32 chip which usually include good powersaving modes. As with the RAK11300, I did not want to go down the Wisblock way and designed my own breakout board:

GeeekPi RPi 4G Hat for RAKwireless RAK5146 USB

Sat, 16 Nov 2024 17:31:59 +0000

In 2021 I started playing around with the SX1303 based RAKwirless RAK5146 USB LoRaWAN concentrator in mini-PCIe form factor ( 1, 2 ). Back at the time I used the RAK2287 Pi Hat which - even though the website states otherwise (“Note: RAK2287/RAK5146 Pi HAT is compatible only with the SPI version of the RAK2287 and RAK5146 LPWAN concentrators.”) is actually compatible with the USB version of RAK5146. In the second post I even want so far to hack the RAK2287 and bridge the PPS (Pulse Per Second) output of the included GPS onto the RPi GPIOs so that I could turn the RPi into a precise GPS NTP server - and I even added an I2C/“poor-mans-QWIIC connector” to it.

RAK11300 - Getting it to work with Arduino-Pico and RadioLib!

Fri, 03 Nov 2023 16:08:49 +0000

Intro

About a year ago I got some RAK11300 modules - which are a nice combination of an RP2040 alongside a SX1262 radio on one module - designed a breakout board - tested it - and quickly shelved it. Reason was that this module was somewhat Arduino compliant - as stated - however only with RAKwireless Arduino mbedOS Repo. Alongside of it being a bit… hacked together, it had the issue of not supporting any low power modes for the RP2040 - making it run on both cores at full tilt and consuming batteries in no time. Not the best thing for a portable/battery powered sensor system, I guess?

LoRaWAN with RAKwireless RAK5146: The SX1303 in the field, a rocky start

Sun, 10 Oct 2021 09:11:36 +0000

Setting the scene

Working with the guys over at balena comes with some perks - including the peer pressure of getting into new technologies and trying them out. My go-to person this time was balena Developer Advocate Marc Pous - who is not only no stranger to soldering - but also deeply rooted in the LoRaWAN field (and he is also doing balenaHub projects for LoRaWAN applications 1, 2).

I heared about LoRaWAN a while back, when I was working with Sigfox - but never really gave it a try, other than trying to run a basestation for a certain satellite using LoRa for its communication.