LoRa - Long-Range Radio for IoT | Arduino, ESP32, RPI Pico

LoRa is a low-cost, license-free method of sending short data bursts over long distances. It’s perfect for IoT sensors and remote control projects. Today, we’ll see how easy it is to use LoRa in our projects.

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If you need to send small amounts of data, such as sensor readings, over long distances, then LoRa (Long Range) radio is the technology for you. You can achieve incredible distances using low-cost modules and basic antennas. You can measure these distances in miles or kilometers with the right equipment.

Today, we will experiment with two readily available, low-cost LoRa modules: the HopeRF RFM95W and the Adafruit RFM9x. They are essentially the same module, with the Adafruit device having onboard voltage regulation and logic-level conversion, making it compatible with both 5-volt and 3.3-volt microcontrollers. The Adafruit offering is also easier to handle, as the HopeRF module is not breadboard-friendly.

We will use these modules with an Arduino Uno, a Raspberry Pi Pico, and an ESP32. We’ll program with both C++ in the Arduino IDE and MicroPython using the Thonny IDE.

Here is the Table of Contents for today's video:

00:00 - Introduction
01:30 - LoRa Primer
07:38 - HopeRF RFM95W & Adafruit RFM9x
11:08 - LoRa Antennas
13:06 - Seeedstudio LoRa-E5
14:35 - Heltec ESP32-LoRa
16:09 - Installing & Using the LoRa Library
18:32 - Adafruit RFM9x Hookup
21:24 - Demo 1 - Simple data transmission
25:43 - Demo 2 - One-way remote control
30:34 - Demo 3 - Callback & Two-way remote control
36:43 - Raspberry Pi Pico MicroPython & Hookup
39:13 - LoRa with MicroPython Code & Demo
45:39 - Data Gathering Project Intro
46:35 - Data Gathering Hookup & Operation
53:11 - Data Gathering Code
1:02:45 - Data Gathering Demos
1:05:07 - Conclusion

While this is a long video, it barely scratches the surface of what you can accomplish using LoRa. You’ll be seeing more LoRa-related projects and tutorials here soon, including one on LoRaWAN.

Hope you enjoy the video!

Bill