Check out the Reyax RYLR998 transceiver. It operates with simple AT style commands. No libraries necessary. All LoRa parameters are available. Works with anything that can do serial, baud rate is adjustable, default is 115200. I've been using it quite successfully.
@@AndreasSpiess I had not looked at the E32 since it is 433Mhz. I need 915Mhz here in the US. The RYLR998 is very small and very well documented. Very good manual on the AT commands. Bought mine from Amazon with quick delivery. The RYLR998 has AT commands to change anything you wish for LoRa parameters and/or your per to per, one to many, or many to one LoRa network addresses. Reyax has other models but I don’t see one at 433Mhz with the AT command set. I like it because you don’t have to get involved with LoRaWan or the Things network. Too much overhead for me. The board can also be fitted with a Ufl connector if you want a higher gain antenna. I have gotten around ½ mile range in a suburban setting with a pretty crude prototype using the built in antenna. It can be set to 868Mhz with the AT commands; is that legal in Europe? They are simple and get the job done!
I have tried a couple of solutions for a mailbox notifier. My mailbox is about ten meters from my house in a solid steel enclosure. I tried wifi and lora, but always had either reception problems or battery problems. Now I just use an Aquara DJT11LM Zigbee vibration detector, which works best for me, unless the mail carrier is very gentle. On the other hand, we got a lot of false notification last week when they were tearing up the sidewalk to lay new fiber optic cables.
Interresting! I did not know that Zigbee works out of such a box. My box is about 50m away. Using "secondary" indicators usually are less reliable. Here, 6 mailboxes are connected. So, vibration would not give me my private message, but, because I get most of the days something, it still would create a valid notification.
I have tried alot of solutions, different wifi systems and zigbee devices, nothing worked for me, untill I tried a Philips Hue Motion Sensor, that works just fine.
Currently, I use a open/close magnetic sensor for my alarm system to monitor the mail box. Has been working flawlessly for the last 5 years and I get about 8 to 10 months out of the wafer battery. I also soldered a small lead of wire to the printed circuit antenna in the sensor and drilled a small hole in the bottom of the mail box. It is about 60' away from the house. When it dies I will probably attempt your Mailbox Notifier". Nice video!
wow, I also did the same solution, finished it about 6 months ago. i relied on your amazing videos for understanding Lora. everything i did is very similar to what you reocmmend as well, except i used different boards as I found cheap esp32 plus lora integrated for the sender and a cheap single lora connected to your 2nd favorite esp board. the problem i faced is that i love on 5th floor, the floors are very think and the mailbox is inside the building. So i had to put the reciver in the balkony and hang it out a bit. Even the windows wouldnt allow the lora message to the reciver. I am using the 800 ish frequency (dont remember the exact freq). I bought a specific antenna for the sender, but it didnt help much.
And I would never discover it because I would never get the alarm to empty the mailbox ;-) One advantage: I also would no more get invoices! Have a nice week.
@@AndreasSpiess I would recommend a HELTEC V3 Board with Meshtatic and use the inbuilt Detection Sensor feature. It could transmit a State Signal every 2 minutes, so even if a jammer arrives or the system malfunctions, you would know. To save battery, a better board with the newer nrf chipset could be used or the mailbox could get a small solar panel and would double as an outdoor node.
Nice update on your mailbox notifier project. 🙂 Hopefully I'll have some down time this winter and I think I'll experiment with some of the wireless chips that you have described here. Since they come from aliexpress I guess I should order them soon, as typical delivery times to western Canada, seems to be about 3 months. :-)🙄😴😴😴👍
I've always used LoRaWAN confirmed messages for data that has to be reliably delivered. The two LoRaWAN stacks I've used both have callbacks for packets that are not confirmed by the gateway, which just re-queues the message and tries until it hits a timeout or retry counter value. I built mine using an STM32WLE5JC and a CR123A lithium battery. Prototyped the design using a Seeed Studio Wio-E5 mini Dev Board before committing to a PCB. I looked at a handful of ways for sensing the door opening and settled on a reed switch. Lower power than LIDAR, accelerometer, and other methods I looked at.
Interesting! I never used confirmed LoRaWAN messages. Which libraries do you use on the sensor side and how did you program the STM32? Does the confirmation message arrives during the receive window after transmit? Maybe I will try it once.
I also acknowledge that confirmed uplinks would have done the job. They eat a little bit more of the battery and the gateway airtime, but it's negligible. Nice video!
I've used both the Semtech LoRaMAC-Node package and the ST STM32Cube_FW_WL package under the STM32CubeIDE. They're basically super-loops, and you implement handlers for their callbacks for handling join requests, building your packet structure, transmit complete, data received, what to do if a confirmed packet fails to be delivered, that sort of thing. As far as programming, I've done that using PlatformIO for the Semtech based projects, and through the STM32CubeIDE (which I >really< don't like) for the STM32Cube projects. I've also done a handful of projects using the Heltec LoRaWAN library on ESP32s and programming with PlatformIO. I like the Heltec code better in that it runs under FreeRTOS. I've never really bothered to try getting the Semtech or ST libraries to run under FreeRTOS, but people have probably done that. Also, you're correct, the acknowledgement is sent by the gateway during the devices receive window.
One of the most useful things about my diy sensor network is that each sensor has a max update interval which forces the sensor to send an update of the current state, even if there is no change. This helps with some edge cases, but it is a good way to monitor the network. A "time since last update" bar chart for the network can immediately tell me if something is wrong.
Glad to be a Patreon supporter. Again you read my mind; even all the way from Michigan. I have played with Meshtastic and have decided my home automation can be done better with less complex LoRa methods. This video is right on target for me. My mailbox is 300M from house (I am on 10 acres (4 hectares) of land). Notice nested parentheses, I must be a programmer (LOL). I also want low power security mesh to be aware of what is on my land (deer in garden or unwanted 'guest') [gates, motion, doors, etc.]. My home-assistant system is on a solar battery bank. If I lose power, some of my automation is still running. If there is an EMP, then my hand tools will be 'high tech', otherwise, I will have some tech working. Thank you for all you do and share. Doug, N8VY 👍
Thank you for your support, Doug! Actually, I was in Chicago and Milwaukee this summer on my way to Las Vegas. So the "reading" did not need to travel far ;-) 73
@13:00 I also use that method. However I recently switched to using GPIO registers and bits to decide upon what to do. There are two reasons: bit testing and branching takes only one instruction on AVR (see SBRC/SBRS for instance) and is faster than comparing bytes then branching. Second GPIO registers (which area mostly accessed with in/out instructions instead of more costly STS/LDS) aren't used most of the time. These two combined is such that flag testing in interrupts requires no push/pop, which is even faster.
Very good 👍. I was going to suggest adding the current battery voltage into the notification but if it last for 8 years on one pair of batteries it probably isn’t worth the effort. Keep up the great work 😀👍
The current TTN solution transfers the battery voltage and I might add it to the new design. But as you said: If the power consumption is so low, you loose a lot of power transmitting additional data.
I've been watching you for close to 6 years now, love every video. I hope you look into Reticulum and do a series on it. I believe the protocol unlocks a lot of potential for LoRa modules. Cheers.
@@AndreasSpiess In the easiest of terms to my understanding this would essentially replace IPV4, with it being hardware agnostic, it can transfer all kinds of data over almost any data medium. For the meshtastic reference. it can more efficiently communicate between nodes with more encryption. The meshchat project that utilizes reticulum can even do voice communications over NRF52840. With meshtastic, it is impossible to support over the chirp spectrum. Unfortunately, I believe the project does not get the recognition it deserves to complete a polished version. Hope that helps and I would love a video series from you about it to explain better than I can. Edit: TL/DR: This could create the most versatile, headless, mesh protocol with superior encryption over the other options.
@@Blazerboyk9 I think, some things get mixed up: The RF channel defines the available speed any protocol can use. LoRa, by definition, is slow but bridges long distances with low power requirements. The protocol can be efficient or not. Encryption and addressing, like with the IP protocol, create overhead. This is why plain IP is nearly never used for IOT. Encryption is already made by the chips. So, only rare cases need more for IOT data (which usually are not state secrets). So I would not expect wonders from a new protocol in the area of efficiency. It must have other advantages to be better than the simple (and efficient) Meshtastic protocol.
@@AndreasSpiess I agree with what you are saying, the analogy was more for the way it uses addressing for devices. Either way if it intrigues you enough I would love your take! Thank you. Edit: I just wish it had more recognition by people who understand networking and RF far greater than me, and your top of that list
Today I learned that if I build a mailbox notifier with Lora, I may get two mail deliveries a day... in the U.S. (it's been over 60 years since the U.S. Post Office discontinued more than one delivery a day! Also, why not have an antenna made from a large spring that will pop out of the mailbox (and clear the Faraday cage) every time the mailman opens the door -- they would, of course, have to push the spring antenna back into the compartment. What fun for your mailman to have something like those joke snakes in a can for your mail box -- something to distract him from the humdrum of hundreds of mail deliveries and to look forward to every delivery. Lastly, it could very expensive to test -- having to send mail to yourself to guarantee that the mailman has reason to open your compartment door. (Silliness from an early morning fan who looks forward to each and every new presentation you share, seriously: thank you so much for what you do.)
1. We get our newspaper early in the morning unrelated with the "general mail" 2. The mailmen (not only one because they rotate) usually know me anyway because I get a lot of Chinese packets ;-) And thank you for watching all my videos!
I made my final year project of Off-grid text based communication system using Ra-02 with ESP-32 while using my android phone for sending and receiving messages using Bluetooth serial terminal, btw I am still pending to make a dedicated Kotlin app for that. I also used Sandeep Mistry's Library. 😎
@@ReNaZwanzigneunzehn I have never checked. As far as my knowledge It should show you the frames and data but to understand the E32 frames you need to decode the payload again.
@@erfanmahmud3097 But for configuration of SX-Modul I need the following parameters: LORA_BANDWIDTH 0: 125 kHz, 1: 250 kHz,2: 500 kHz LORA_SPREADING_FACTOR 7 // [SF7..SF12] LORA_CODINGRATE [1: 4/5, 2: 4/6, 3: 4/7, 4: 4/8] LORA_PREAMBLE_LENGTH 8 LORA_SYMBOL_TIMEOUT 0 LORA_FIX_LENGTH_PAYLOAD_ON LORA_IQ_INVERSION_ON false but E32-Modul has only air data rate parameter....🤔
@@erfanmahmud3097but the question is: how to configure the following parameters that are required for a lora SX module: LORA_BANDWIDTH 0: 125 kHz, 1: 250 kHz,2: 500 kHz LORA_SPREADING_FACTOR 7 // [SF7..SF12] LORA_CODINGRATE [1: 4/5, 2: 4/6, 3: 4/7, 4: 4/8] LORA_PREAMBLE_LENGTH 8 LORA_SYMBOL_TIMEOUT 0 LORA_FIX_LENGTH_PAYLOAD_ON LORA_IQ_INVERSION_ON false because setting up a E22/E32 modul is done with 3 different parameters: air data rate, uartParity and uartBaudRate ? 🤔
I use the switch statement with the ENUMs for the state names. In your case the state machine is straightforward. But when you have error states, timeouts, interrupting events, abort processes, sub states, and a whole bunch of other things... this state machine strategy can explode the number of states on your design. Simply adding an Enter and an Exit with dispatcher logic can greatly wrangle the states and soothe your headache.
@@AndreasSpiess I agree, don't need to seek out complexity, it will find you! What is needed are strategies to contain and organize it when it does get complicated. In this case it is simple and the scope is narrow focused. I build prop controllers for Halloween Haunt, and so my logic is more involved. I have one prop that controls a couple of pneumatics, one that quickly lowers a drop panel, and then a second cylinder is actuate another cylinder to have skelly lunge forward, the panel needs to be down and then the sound needs to synchronize with the action... I have a E-Stop switch that puts the prop into safe mode, and I have a RESET that has to reset the logic and the prop... so entering the state has preconditions, and exiting a state requires clean up. If reset is pressed the prop has to go into a new mode to retract the skelly, then raise the panel. Anyway, if you want to see what I did, it on my RU-vid channel, I have 6 videos posted, it's the "2019 Haunted Garage", and at 40 seconds into the video you'll see that prop in action. This year I'm doing something similar, I've torn that prop apart and I'm repurposing it and I'm adding microswitches to detect the Panel's positions... While I think I got away without them, I know that it's better to put the interlocks into the prop.
@@AndreasSpiess Thank you kindly. I'm not a tech channel and I struggle to get one video out a year, but there's a lot more work behind the scenes. I'll tell you about another way I use a state machine to sequence events, basically I use the number of milliseconds since prop was triggered, and the case statements are used to trigger the "on" and "off" events.
A good option is RAK3172. That module has the microcontroller and lora transceiver in one small footprint. It can work standalone using Arduino or by AT commands.
@@AndreasSpiess The module offers P2P (peer to peer) communication option using only LoRa . Of course the implementation of the back channel protocol has to be implemented. Though the solution you show in the video looks quite stright forward. Thanks for your videos!
if you had ESPnow to MQTT gateway you could have simply used ESP32 in the mailbox and that would be kind of 5 times simpler with the same results: reliable, low power, with confirmations. ESPnow supports long range connectivity and the full transmission including wake up and go to sleep is kind of 0.1s with about 8uA sleep current for ESP32. Less complications but of course one has to have espnow2mqtt gateway already there.
@@zyghom LoRa can transfer a message that is buried in the noise floor! You exchange the high bandwidth and requirement for a high link budget of WiFi with the opposites for LoRa.
@@AndreasSpiess I've been thinking of 18650s and solar for a letterbox monitor but those stat's for the AAs really blew all that out of the water. Such a good point!
@@DenfordBerriman You could maybe consider solar + LiFePO4. If you have it charged to max. 3.4 Volt it may be exactly right (I did not check the specs, just brainstorming).
@Andreas Spiess Now that there are new WIFI 7 routers with the new 6 GHz (5.925-7.125 GHz) band, it would be really cool to see a 6 GHz Yagi build. Because you can't buy them right now if you don't want to spend 400$ or more on a antenna. Since the Frequency is so high a 12 Element design would fit on a 150mm PCB. Sadly I don't have the skills or equipment myself to design it but it would be so cool if you would design a PCB antenna that everyone can just get made online for a few bucks 🙂
You get many directional devices for 5.8GHz and maybe they will be extended to 6GHz. A Ubiquiti PBE-5AC-ISO-Gen2-EU-5 GHz PowerBeam AC has 25dBi gain, much more than a 12 Element yagi. Of course, you get devices with less gain and wider opening. Maybe you ask Andrew Mcneil. He does such stuff on his channel. I decided to buy the stuff above 2.5GHz because it is mechanically too challenging for me.
Thanks for this nice video! Correct me if i'm wrong, but one big advantage I see using Lorawan is built-in data encryption, which I believe is missing with a "raw" Lora communication.
Packages (mostly from China) are tracked and I am notified, and the rest is trash... No sensor required... My mailbox is also a mile as the crow flys and two for me... But, I do need a driveway sensor with some real range...
Again a super smooth video with daily problems of engineers! Have you tested or can you estimate the line of sight for your Lora connection? Is 2 km possible?
Next step is a "smart" mailbox which uses computer vision to sort the mail, then shred junk mail, and bring what's left to the door. In the US the generous supply of junk mail can provide plenty of free thermal energy to power the mailbox ;-)
The ebyte module have PDF manual, that explain how you can set "speed on air", lower Speed mean big spreading factor. There Is a setting PIN that with low state enter in configuration mode with AT command. Id you set AirRate vert low the Speed of serial communication Is set to 1200bps
For such a simple task your software could have run on the EFM8 Busy Bee 8-bit Microcontroller in the E32 module... It would have been interesting to see you hack it to change it's firmware to put your own program on it.
Well, should you get your hands on a none-refillable vape... Those usually have tiny lithium cells. With a cheap charging electronic you can run this for quite some time, and if you don't vape yourself but get it for free from someone else you only have the cost for the charging electronics - and even this you can use for other such cells... 😊
@@stevebabiak6997 Good guess, and yes. I also watch others that make similar content in my mother's tongue. ☺️ But I started tinkering way before RU-vid started. 😏
Good idea! I prefer primary batteries for such low-power fixed sensors because I can exchange them on the fly. Otherwise, I would have to remove the sensor for charging. I also do not know the self discharging rate of such batteries.
@@AndreasSpiess LiIon batteries have negligible self discharge. I wrote the voltage on several batteries and just left them for more than 2 years. And they were the same afterwards. They were left in a tempered and dry room, which may be of interest. Epecially the "dry" part.
For nodes I use the STM32WL parts, it has the semtech ip on die w/ an L4 style STM32. One stop shopping. Rak wireless has some 3.3v boards for about 15$us. I program them using the Ada language in a port i did of Adacores stuff but there are other potentially easier alternatives. The server i use curr is a nodemcu w/spi connected 1276, I plan on replacing it as it occasionally loses the lora module after some days. (I have a keep alive node on the network that xmits a ping every 5mins so that can be used to reboot the lora if not recvd).
@@AndreasSpiess I laid a 20mm pipe to the front gate for a buzzer, gate solenoid and an infrared post checker. The photodetector in the mailbox is scanned 1 miĺlisecond every 10 minutes. After 3 negatives the laser turns off. Even if you use Lora or anything else you still need a power source...
ESP:NOW is Wifi in its core. I use a standard Wifi Card and Wireshark to monitor what I send with ESP:NOW and if the payload is really encrypted. It is just a vendor special frame type that is usually ignored by everything else.
Might have ordered the wrong parts for US This what I need ? And anything else ? Long Range LoRa 915MHz RF Module CDEBYTE E32-900T30D 1W 915 MHz Wireless Transceiver iot Transmitter Receiver
@AndreasSpiess I was wondering if you had any ideas how to test LoRa sensitivity of a receiver. I find it difficult using conventional methods, since even with maximum attenuators, the signal finds a way through leakage paths. 😅
the battery life is very good. i don't know an awful lot about electronics so maybe it has to do more and do it differently but my wireless thermostat takes 4 aa batteries every 3 years to cover a range of 5 metres not km!
3 years is a good value, I think. And the range is probably limited by the wireless standard used (Bluetooth or Zigbee). I also think, your sensor transmits its values periodically and so consumes more energy.
There are several Ebyte models which are similar to the RA02 as in have just the Lora chip and depending on the module a PA+LNA. Generally the ones ending with a D are UART based and then ones ending with a S are SPI based. I have used several of these E32 SPI modules for bidirectional MAVLINK as the UART ones were too slow, the only issue was getting a RF power meter to see the LORA chip output vs PA output power levels as the power table provided by Ebyte is inaccurate.
@@MUSTARDTIGERFPV yes its direct SPI, first we thought of using an external mcu to handle it and then send the data via UART but we had a ton of free IO so we decided to integrate it into our custom flight controller. Unfortunately the source, the flight controller and related material are not open source as we tailor each version to suit the needs of our clients, which includes implementation of other proprietary systems, sensors etc if they want us to.
What do you think about the MH-Tiny board? Have you ever reviewed this board before? In my humble opinion, it's a nice board that can be programmed using a USB to Serial converter.
Nice video! Would not just using confirmed uplinks solve your problem on LoraWAN? A known stratagy is sending 2C+1N messages. Being 2 confirmed and 1 non confirmed.
I never used "confirmed" uplinks. I assume it would also include at least one downlink message. There is not a lot of information available. Did you use it and did it work?
I am not sure if this channel covered this, but a Chinese robotic lawn mower (Mammotion Luba) severely violated the 1% rule and users of it were contacted by the national frequency agencies in at least France, Switzerland and Denmark and were told to stop using it. The manufacturer (Mammotion) quickly rewrote the entire Lora code between the RTK base station and the robotic lawn mower into using a custom frequency hopping algorithm, and there were a lot of bugs, issues, and also a report that even the new algorithm violated the duty time rules. I am interested in how unprofessional and badly designed products on the market ruin the RF experience for everyone, how it is monitored, managed, etc..
Here, the authorities are responsible to monitor the frequencies. However, often, such violations do not harm others and are not discovered. But if discovered, these devices come on a black list and are confiscated by customs (if discovered). However, this Luba is not (yet) on our black list ;-)
@@AndreasSpiess In this instance it actually was discovered by neighboring businesses, as their equipment almost faced a sort of denial of service attack or jamming. The duty cycle of the Mammotion RTK base station was measured by the French ANFR as being between 30% and 95% as per reports. I guess once complaints were sent in to the authorities it wasn't too difficult for them (?) to send a car out and find the offending device. After firmware updates the individuals got a letter saying it was now ok to use the device again, however I am very skeptical of such companies that couldn't care less about the rules to begin with. Many interesting posts on it using the terma Luba, ANFR, RTK, etc.
' using a custom frequency hopping algorithm' There is no frequency hopping that can work, the rules for it are purely time and on the band based, there isn't any language for changing freuqencies within the band resets the time.. The band is clearly designated for low duty, and was willfully misinterpreted to pretend it was OK to be doing continuous transmission in any manner. Max duty in the US was like 30 seconds, a minute, maybe two an hour, been a while since I last checked the spec. ANY manufacturer or seller in the US pretends they 'didn't know', then they are almost guaranteed lying. When they were coming up with this dumb, illegal use of the band, there were tons of people explaining how hard they were breaking the law. But ultimately the FCC are the ones to enforce it here. Don't be surprised if they eventually stop the market totally. Even worse is all the people who do know it's actually illegal, and still using it. FCC can fine their asses heavily if they can prove that the user actually knew it was breaking the rules. So not a smart idea. May vary in other countries, but most of them are even harder on people who break radio equipment laws.
@@SeanChYT ' as RU-vid keeps deleting my replies.' Yes I get it all the time as well, since I spill correct answers and youtube and the corrected hate that lol.. No need, it won't be compliant anyway, there is no 'beat the system' algorithm for it. I was among the many pointing to the exact places that make it 'only low duty cycle' way back when they were first coming up with this obvious misuse of the band. It's not that impossible to read, the people doing this crap knew exactly they were breaking it, but whined 'it's not being used much'. It's not intended to 'be used much', it's supposed to be almost 100% open so the sporadic use gets through relatively easily, even for a ton of devices over large areas.
The confirmation requirement seems odd to me… you can just build a confirmation and require that in whatever implementation you’re using to call lorawan or espnow library. If you have to decision around whether the message was confirmed either way (wake up periodically to retry if the message wasn’t confirmed for example) Whether or not the protocol supports it under the hood seems like gravy, not necessary at all.
Your state machine doesn't show anything happening if there is no acknowledgement. Do you have timeouts in those states that re-transmit the filling or emptied messages?
Your power-consumption data-log shows a base current of 2mA (not in microA range) -you probably tested the power-consumption in standby/suspend and they where out of scope for this video. Archiving the Datasheets standby is often not trivial and i would not trust myself to have done that unless i measured. Since the ra-02 is a sx1278 it probably also has a low standby, if switched into sleep mode the ra-02 Datasheet seems to specify standby (ready to do something) only. You would not need to cut power (mosfet) to it if the driver/program handles the sleep-mode.
I did some measurements. You are right, deep sleep current depends on many things (I did some testing). This is why I assumed a much higher than specified consumption for my calculation. But time will tell when I finished the sleeping part...
Thanks Andreas. Why not use EspNow for mailbox monitoring since its not too far from the house? Seems simpler, cheaper and EspNow has acknowledgements.
EspNow has sort of similar range to wifi (but without wifi APs) at 2.4GHz. It’s different from Lora which operate on lower bands, lower speeds, and much farther ranges.
An interesting device (I hope it can be programmed with the Arduino IDE). However, an ESP32 is probably not needed for most LoRa applications. One important question is: How many wakeup pins does the module have? My notifier needs 2. It seems this module only has one "power latch". That means I would have to add external logic (not complex, of course). The ATTINY wakes up with all pins.
@@AndreasSpiess I can be programmed with Arduino IDE. About the other questions I can't say much because the module hasn't shipped yet, but the advertised "1 nA" sleep current is pretty exciting
What is the time period in which the 1% transmission time rule is calculated? A minute? An hour? A day? If you set it small enough, say 1 ns, you'll never be able to transmit anything since you'll always be using either 0% or close to 100% transmission time.
I do not know if this is officially defined. I would say, one hour is a good time. The idea of the 1% is that you do not block the band for other sensors.
Hi, I used data cable to my mailbox and an arduino. I even got an industrial machine traffic light to come on red when post arrived. Then when I took the mail out using the lower door it would reset.
Hi sir, Have you ever built!/ seen something where esp32 is able to the phone's internet via Bluetooth tethering? I could not find any resources on that...
I frequently use my iPhone to connect my ESP32s to the internet. I just create a hotspot with the same credentials as my home network. Then, the ESPs automatically connect to them outside my home
So can you basically build a “YoLink” system but without the “YoLink system” right into Home Assistant? At the moment I’m using YoLink for doors and power plugs and motion detectors…
@@AndreasSpiess Copy that 👍 Thanks for the reply. Yeah, I like it quite a bit, but I have little experience with other bits and bobs from other manufacturers. But these all work with little to no issues.
Let me pass to you my similar project. Not using Lora, but simple esp8266 wifi, because I have wifi reachable. Also, like yours, I want to be notified as soon as someone (postman) touches/opens the mailbox to put something. My system has really low comsumption, that's why i opted to a battery approach. But why? Because the device is always shutdown until it is triggered. How did i make it boot? I have a magnetic switch that is triggered with a small magnet ring. That ring is threaded in a small fibre cord lead (fisherman cord). When the box is opened the magned is released and the gravity moves the magnet in the cord until it touches the switch. When that happens, the device starts, boots the code, connects to wifi and then upon sucessfull connection, sends a mqqt (mosquito) message. After sent sucessfully, the device shutsdown again. So the only time it's spending battery is during that process. That way I only charge the battery once a week or more. Then, I receive the alert in my homeassistant (with a mobile alert) and I go to the mailbox to get the letter/package. Downside: If I receive a 2nd package or any letter (from a different carrier) before i go to the postbox and reset the system, I'm not being notified anymore. I can live with that, since usually i only use one carrier and they come only one time each day. What do you thing about this?
Using a mechanical switch to power the an ESP32 is a good approach (I used it for other projects). I wanted my notifier switched off when the Mailbox is emptied (by my wife, for example). Our mailboxes have an opening for inserting and a door for removing the mail. So I need two switches which would make your setup a bit more complex.
Are there any reasons to choose 433MHz over 868MHz for this application? I've read online that 868MHz is more common in Europe and that 433MHz tends to be heavily populated with all kinds of RF signals. I'm a complete newbie to this topic and have never experimented with a lora module, but such a bidirectional communication seems to be a nice project to get some first experiences. By the way, can anyone recommend a good separate lora module to start with? Do the modules always come with the right antenna, or do I also have to find an antenna that fits the connector of my board?
You ask many questions answered in videos also on this channel. I propose you search my channel with "LoRa" and "Antenna". Concerning 433/868: Most people probably will not see a big difference if they build their systems. Projects like LoRaWAN and Meshtastic use 868/915MHz and you have to comply.
@@AndreasSpiess Thanks for the quick reply. So I guess I'll try to get my hands on some 868 MHz board and try my luck. Your other videos will surely be a great help for my first steps. Thanks for mentoning.
I'm also thinking to create a mailbox notifier, but i want it to work with standard gateway connected to TTN network. Any ideas on this or maybe some good examples?
I'm building a dedicated server with old pc parts. I have a ryzen 5800 so there's no igpu and I'm waiting for the new rtx5090 announcement to save money and use my old one or sell it and buy a crappy one and have some extra spending money. Which model transceiver should I buy (east coast canada)? I have a large piece of property and want to set up sensors for my flag pole, pool pump, firewood shed, detached garage/wood shop, generator (anti-theft). I'm rambling, sorry Andreas I do that to you alot. Mental health issues, I'm annoying but harmless and mean well. I'm also getting a ham license and plan to build my first radio. Some of the parts are already on order. I have a software engineering degree but ended up being a 911 supervisor and was in charge of checking all sorts of vhf, uhf, tmr systems as we were in contact with fire departments on the opposite side of the cape breton highlands as well. Some departments still used phone in pager systems. Being a nerd, I always asked the Motorola tech about everything and it was cool to see the evolution of rf technologies we used as new ones came out and we maintained the old ones as backup. There was 4x redundancy in some cases depending on geographic factors. Uneccessarry story: The tmr radios were very impressive but I was told very expensive as push to talk was a charge per click from the monopolized telecommunications company. Went from government to hybrid to private to a Bell buyout that made it a headache to service contract companies who fixed everything from pos systems to our 911 servers. I wouldn't fix anything unless I had to because it took money out of the worker's pockets who got called out 24/7. Snow storms were the edge cases where I had to make decisions being in charge of the employees I worked with and public safety. As soon as someone grew familiar with the server room they hired a new it company and eventually the dregs of the industry minded critical systems because they paid the least and their contract tenders underbid everyone. They offered me a junior programmer job for gis backend development at a job fair years prior but i turned it down as a friend showed me their code base a few years prior. A mixture of c, c++, visual basic and ms office access with a custom 'borrowed from netscape' html renderer i couldve wtitten in a day my first year of school. This was before facebook and google. I learned that 90 percent of the info tech industry is propped up by 10 percent. It's partly why I changed majors after 2 years in school as well haha. I burnt out in my late 30s and retired as the stress was too much. Helping people was extremely rewarding but we were understaffed with a high turnover rate. I was in charge of training as well and so much nepotism led to our workplace being the 'foot in the door place' for people who had no interest in the job or human kindness in some cases and would eventually go to tax collection desk jobs in our union. Our union was impossible to get fired from, even during probation. It led me to despising unions and beurocratic bloat in government departments. I took a demotion my last year there hoping just doing the job of helping the public would make a difference, along with outside help from the private health care sector I paid out of pocket, not covered by our benefits. The damage was already done and led me to not leaving my house for 5 years. I am alot better now and leaning into our shared hobby and writing music have been the biggest helps. One of your new years videos still resonates with me and is why I watch your videos so faithfully. That and you're not an advertising-based creator who only does mailbags and device reviews. Alot of these same people have the gall to ask people for more money a month on patreon tiers higher than my bidirectional 1.5gig internet bill each month. There's also a lot of people on RU-vid with (real or imagined) engineering degrees propped up by pcbway who are going to realize that being a content creator who relies on free gear for reviews or mailbag videos counts not as work experience when the ccp decides their soft power propaganda fund money is better spent elsewhere and a whole pillar of the genre I used to love just collapses. I have warned some former creator friends (who I care about) of this very real possibility and I'm treated like I'm crazy. I'm not including mailbag based creators in this group. That is a sub genre of sorts with a bit of value and alot of great, funny people in some cases who are not mortgage-dependent on ad revenue. I've seen alot of great creators who just wanted to teach and hopefully make a go of it financially turn sloth, gluttonous for money and become intellectually bereft, fooling themselves they are still the same. Sorry if that seems meandering and harsh. It makes new people to the hobby have a harder time gaining a foothold base of knowledge to determine the million different and awesome facets of this hobby to pursue next. I see no sign of you ever doing that haha.
Thank you for your support and your long message! I am glad you are better now. As said in the video, LoRaWAN (on 915MHz in Canada) is a good choice for sensors. One gateway is good for many sensors. You find many videos on this channel about the topic. Concerning DMR in HAM radio: If you have DMR repeaters in your area, you get not too expensive Anytone handhelds.
Watch first my video with "world record" in the title to understand propagation of such waves. Then you decide if you want to invest the time into this topic.
I'm really confused even after trying to re-watch a few times - you're saying that LoRaWAN is inadequate because it uses unconfirmed messages yet then somehow immediately proceed to use LoRaWAN with confirmed messages...? Which is it then?
Am I the only one who has problems with radio waves going through mailboxes? They are annoyingly made of metal and the opening faces away from the house.
What is the problem with LoRaWAN and TTN? You don't have a gateway? In that case have you tried NbTrans? ru-vid.com/video/%D0%B2%D0%B8%D0%B4%D0%B5%D0%BE-fF4j3BAHCZg.html All other systems add noise. [meshtastic / 1:1]
@@AndreasSpiess it’s not important for Mail box. Bi-directional communication doubles the noise. In my experience lorawan is very reliable even with other gateways.
Nice material but the initial list of reasons why to do it in the first place (other than a reason for making a YT video of course) is far-fetched. How many times a day your mailbox gets full making the limited number of downlink messages important? Similar with meshtastic - the fact it’s ack mechanism works with more complex topology doesn’t mean it can’t support simple, fixed 1:1 links. Just say you want to make something custom for the sake of tinkering :) It’s hobby, isn’t it? The more effort the better (and more videos for us)
I agree, this is hobby. But it has a real reason. My TTN sensor became unreliable. Sometimes it took hours to get the message, sometimes my connection to TTN was down. I did not wanted to investigate and decided, the process had too many "moving parts" and wanted to simplify it. And maybe other use cases need more state changes a day... I do not know how an acknowledgement would work with TTN. Keep in mind: The LoRaWAN sensors only stay on receive for a short time after transmit. Maybe I would have to transmit every package at least two times to get the chance of an acknowledgement. Maybe you know more?
