LoRa beginner

[Denis Gottardello]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 18:11

Hi. I need to start to use the sx1276 for LoRa implementation.

I looked that there is a demoboard that support mbed but I think it is not good for me because I can't use mbed libraries and I need to implement LoRa with St and another type of microcontroller.Could someone suggest to me how to start?I'm a beginner in LoRa and in radio applications in general.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 18:34

The LRWAN software is a good place to start

http://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/i-cube-lrwan.html

 

For the SX1276 either the LoRa Discovery board with the Murata module, or the SX1276 Shield (supported in above code trees)

http://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/b-l072z-lrwan1.html

 

https://os.mbed.com/components/SX1276MB1xAS/

 

https://community.st.com/community/stm32-community/blog/2017/04/05/lora-discovery-kit

 

[Andrew Neil]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 19:42

I would also suggest that you start with 

http://www.st.com/en/evaluation-tools/b-l072z-lrwan1.html

  

and

http://www.st.com/en/embedded-software/i-cube-lrwan.html

 

Search this forum for recent discussions on the above.

I can't use mbed

 Why not?

I need (sic) to implement LoRa with St and another type of microcontroller.

Not quit sure what you mean by that?

Clearly, this is not the place to discuss other makes of microcontroller!

I'm a beginner in LoRa

Start here: 

https://www.lora-alliance.org/

 

In particular:

https://www.lora-alliance.org/what-is-lora

And, of course, use google; LoRa is quite a 'Hot Topic' at the moment - there are lots of tutorials & examples on the interwebs ...

[Denis Gottardello]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 21:09

Many thanks.

I think I will buy this

https://www.digikey.it/product-detail/it/semtech-corporation/SX1276MB1MAS/SX1276MB1MAS-ND/5015648

 

and I will try to implement the protocol explained here

https://www.semtech.com/uploads/documents/sx1276.pdf

 

because I need to learn how to use LoRa and I need to implement it in both St and Renesas microcontrollers.

I hope it will be not so hard.

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 20:13

>>Not quit sure what you mean by that? Clearly, this is not the place to discuss other makes of microcontroller!

The supposition here would be that the LoRa side is partitioned into an STM32 which slaves to a much faster and complex host system, be it a Broadcom, Marvell or Rockchip, etc. running Linux or whatever. I'm not disinclined to tackle systems level integration issues, it is not like the bulk of us work for ST, or have the luxury of working only with Brand X products.

[Andrew Neil]

Posted on February 25, 2018 at 20:32

I should have said 'recommend' rather than 'discuss'.

[LMI2]

Posted on February 26, 2018 at 08:15

HC-12 is a cheap long range transmitter receiver. And easy to use. If high power 433MHz =LORA is legal in your country, then HC-12 should be too.

[Andrew Neil]

Posted on February 26, 2018 at 10:54

Please provide a link to the manufacturer documentation for this 'HC-12'.

I found this: 

http://trainelectronics.com/Arduino/HC-12-Serial_Radio/images/HC-12%20v2.3A.pdf

  

It says,

The HC-12 module uses a Silicon Labs Si4463 to provide RF communications

That is not a LoRa chip:

https://www.silabs.com/documents/public/data-sheets/Si4464-63-61-60.pdf

  

[Tesla DeLorean]

Posted on February 26, 2018 at 13:53

The HC-12 seems like a more obfuscated solution, attaching the STM32 directly to the SX1276 avoids having the STM8 in the way. SiLabs has a newer EZR32 solution which integrates a radio + CM3/4, which replaces the Si1000 8051 based combo, and I'd expect ST to have an integrated solution for LoRa in the future.

The USI and Murata modules integrating SX127x and STM32L0xx parts are pretty cheap and significantly more powerful, to the point of removing a MPU from most solutions.

Also the Semtech LoRa radios work significantly better than SiLabs EZR ones in my experience.

[Andrew Neil]

Posted on February 26, 2018 at 13:59

Clive One wrote:

 I'd expect ST to have an integrated solution for LoRa in the future.

There have been rumours ...