Well, it turns out that a Seeed Xiao esp32 lora board fits exactly into the 18650 battery bank case from the dollar store. Added a 2500Mah cell, and RAK PCB internal antenna. Getting 14hrs from full charge to the cutoff, Bluetooth connected the whole time. I’m sure a NRF52 would fit just fine as well.
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Which dollar store?
Bought one at a Dollarama in Carleton Place, and another at Giant Tiger (not a dollar store, but cheap store) in Arnprior. Ontario, Canada
Nice.
Do the xiao devices come with GPS?
No they don’t, they’re quite basic. If you want to try one out, the nRF52 version is the one to get.
Thanks, I appreciate it.
Very nice, now the question is whether you want it running constantly or sleeping most of the time and booting up for short bursts. Could be handy to have it boot up at a scheduled time, listen for a message for 30 seconds, then sleep for a period. That would let you do a quick GPS fix and send the location, scan for Bluetooth or WiFi signals, read some other sensor, or do something else then send off the data and respond to a command if needed. Also a small solar panel on one side could be enough to dramatically increase the battery life, maybe even making it indefinite depending on the load, and 14 hours is enough to last overnight so that could make it a good repeater.
Looks very cool, but what does the esp32 lora board and RAK PCB internal antenna do for 14 hours? (I assume it’s not charging something!)
Its a meshcore companion. The original battery bank PCB is gone, and the lora radio happens to be the same size, so it fits in its spot.
Thanks, I just looked at the pretty picture and not the community! 😅
Could be used as a bitchat throwie =D Edit:Spelling