LoRA project

[gdimaria]

HI, 
I would need to control, individually or in groups, the external lights of a building with a traditional electrical system (no knx and not even canx). My idea would be to put an LM in the building that controls the lights through LoRA actuators, installed on each light pole.

It is feasible? 

Which devices should I buy (LM, actuators, etc.)?

Thanks

Peppe

[admin]

What is the maximum distance between control points? If you are going to install something inside of a light pole then it should have an external antenna. Because the pole is probably made of metal and will worsen the radio signal by a significant amount.

[gdimaria]

I think the distance should be around 2 or 300 meters, I have to check.... but I could arrange it installing the actuator in a plastic waterproof external box. 

Right now I need to understand what I need to do it, in order to submit a quote to the customer.

[admin]

First thing to keep in mind is that with larger distance the antennas must be mounted higher no matter which technology is used. For example the height should be at least 5m for 300m distance and 868MHz frequency (LoRaWAN). Our LoRa solution uses 433MHz frequency so the height should be at least 7.2m. You can use this tools for calculation: https://www.everythingrf.com/rf-calculat...calculator

LoRaWAN can be a solution but you will need additional hardware - LoRaWAN gateway. You will also need LoRaWAN server software. It's possible to run it on LM but it's rather complicated to set up. There's a cloud solution - The Things Network, but I would not recommend using a cloud-only solutions.

Our LoRa hardware solution might work but it's not recommended for outdoor usage because the hardware does not have any protection from condensation.

[gdimaria]

First thing to keep in mind is that with larger distance the antennas must be mounted higher no matter which technology is used. For example the height should be at least 5m for 300m distance and 868MHz frequency (LoRaWAN). Our LoRa solution uses 433MHz frequency so the height should be at least 7.2m. You can use this tools for calculation: https://www.everythingrf.com/rf-calculat...calculator

LoRaWAN can be a solution but you will need additional hardware - LoRaWAN gateway. You will also need LoRaWAN server software. It's possible to run it on LM but it's rather complicated to set up. There's a cloud solution - The Things Network, but I would not recommend using a cloud-only solutions.

Our LoRa hardware solution might work but it's not recommended for outdoor usage because the hardware does not have any protection from condensation.

I am moving first steps in LoraWan and IoT world, I already own a Lorawan gateway and a couple a single lora actuator and registered them on the things network, but I can't set on/off, just able to see live data coming from them... I feel a bit frustrated so I was looking for an easier solution

[admin]

You can send downlink (Server -> Gateway -> LoRaWAN device) messages via HTTP: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/ap.../#downlink

But I agree that LoRaWAN is a over-complicated for local usage. It is designed to allow secure communication over public networks. And the application data format is not controlled by the standard at all.