RAKwireless has released the WisMesh RAK3312 Starter Kit, a modular LoRa mesh communication kit based on the company’s WisBlock ecosystem. The kit is intended for building private, off-grid communication networks using the open-source Meshtastic firmware, without requiring manual firmware flashing or custom hardware assembly. The kit uses the RAK3312 WisBlock Core, which combines an Espressif ESP32-S3 dual-core microcontroller clocked at…
I really don’t understand the esp32 Lora radios, they use so much power they’re useless for anything battery powered. I only use one as my home gateway since it has WiFi and I keep it plugged in. It hops through my low power tree node as a proxy.
I’ve got a Haltec V4 running on battery/solar as a rooftop node. It’s got a 10ah battery, but it’s solar panel came loose and is currently very poorly aligned. On a cloudy set of days, it drops to about 80%. That said, I had to disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to do it. So really, not using ESP32 features, just it’s 1W transmitter. My dedicated MQTT node is also ESP32, with Wi-Fi enabled, but it’s constantly plugged in.
I really don’t understand the esp32 Lora radios, they use so much power they’re useless for anything battery powered. I only use one as my home gateway since it has WiFi and I keep it plugged in. It hops through my low power tree node as a proxy.
I’ve got a Haltec V4 running on battery/solar as a rooftop node. It’s got a 10ah battery, but it’s solar panel came loose and is currently very poorly aligned. On a cloudy set of days, it drops to about 80%. That said, I had to disable Wi-Fi and Bluetooth to do it. So really, not using ESP32 features, just it’s 1W transmitter. My dedicated MQTT node is also ESP32, with Wi-Fi enabled, but it’s constantly plugged in.
Agree, anything that has an ESP32 for portable use is an immediate pass for me. I don’t even consider it.
Low cost and WiFi is my guess.