No WiFi No Problem! Long-Range is Finally Easy!
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Date: 2025-12-12
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Comments and reviews: 20
andrew32155
GreatScott! Wonderful video for a great intro to LoRa and IOT!
The IR light gates are definitely cool. And I can see why you used them. Higher tech etc. and the applications for a light gate in things like a parts bin, a cabinet, machinery/safety or other body sensing is obvious.
What I'd have liked to have seen though is a brief mention of something simpler and one piece for a basic room/outbuilding security system however. This is deeply nitpicky, so forgive me. Your solution was obviously proof of concept and way way cooler. And obviously if I can think of this, everybody else could too. But, maybe at least mentioning a basic PIR sensor, mounted high on a wall at the back of the shed, pointed at the door, and covering a big swath of the space would be an easier solution for actual security might have been a good idea. Because someone seeing the light gates could just crouch down and go under them.
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GreatScott! Wonderful video for a great intro to LoRa and IOT!
The IR light gates are definitely cool. And I can see why you used them. Higher tech etc. and the applications for a light gate in things like a parts bin, a cabinet, machinery/safety or other body sensing is obvious.
What I'd have liked to have seen though is a brief mention of something simpler and one piece for a basic room/outbuilding security system however. This is deeply nitpicky, so forgive me. Your solution was obviously proof of concept and way way cooler. And obviously if I can think of this, everybody else could too. But, maybe at least mentioning a basic PIR sensor, mounted high on a wall at the back of the shed, pointed at the door, and covering a big swath of the space would be an easier solution for actual security might have been a good idea. Because someone seeing the light gates could just crouch down and go under them.
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VeniceInventors
I'd recommend reinforcing the shed too. Alarms and cameras might repel amateurs, but pros and desperate people won't be deterred by either, and if you're away from home, knowing someone broke in won't do much good. Of course that doesn't mean you can't have fun and learn something by installing sensors and using LoRa.
Since you like to make hardware, I'd suggest also building a scary-looking robot which comes to the door if it opens without your phone BT being in proximity, NFC, key code, or other proof of legitimate entry. Of course the robot can't do anything drastic, but if it shows up unexpectedly and looks dangerous enough, most burglars won't try to find out how far it's willing to go.
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I'd recommend reinforcing the shed too. Alarms and cameras might repel amateurs, but pros and desperate people won't be deterred by either, and if you're away from home, knowing someone broke in won't do much good. Of course that doesn't mean you can't have fun and learn something by installing sensors and using LoRa.
Since you like to make hardware, I'd suggest also building a scary-looking robot which comes to the door if it opens without your phone BT being in proximity, NFC, key code, or other proof of legitimate entry. Of course the robot can't do anything drastic, but if it shows up unexpectedly and looks dangerous enough, most burglars won't try to find out how far it's willing to go.
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winmancaboose
You can use a second microcontroller on the Tx side with Meshtastic and connect the two using serial communication. I used the Heltecv3 modules with an Arduino nano to build a remote water tank sensor that is 3000 ft away. The Arduino accepts ASCII from Meshtastic and performs a function. It will listen for water level and then check the level using an ultrasonic sensor and send back a gallon amount based on distance. One thing is you have to filter out the Mesh node ID as is will appear as 8569: water level, it makes it easier that way for multiple commands and reduces memory usage for storing the commands in string format.
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You can use a second microcontroller on the Tx side with Meshtastic and connect the two using serial communication. I used the Heltecv3 modules with an Arduino nano to build a remote water tank sensor that is 3000 ft away. The Arduino accepts ASCII from Meshtastic and performs a function. It will listen for water level and then check the level using an ultrasonic sensor and send back a gallon amount based on distance. One thing is you have to filter out the Mesh node ID as is will appear as 8569: water level, it makes it easier that way for multiple commands and reduces memory usage for storing the commands in string format.
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RoadSurferOfficial
That range is horrible. Try the range test again with the default ping pong app. I’ve tested it to more than 5 miles on the v2. The default settings on your meshtastic example probably doesn’t set the spreading factor and bandwidth correctly for a range test application and is set up for higher data rates. It’s really complicated and would be awesome to see a video on. If you could figure out a way to send data faster than half a second (4byte packet) I’m all ears as well. From my understanding due to the 1% duty cycle rule for Lora; it’s not possible to have fast update rates with the technology
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That range is horrible. Try the range test again with the default ping pong app. I’ve tested it to more than 5 miles on the v2. The default settings on your meshtastic example probably doesn’t set the spreading factor and bandwidth correctly for a range test application and is set up for higher data rates. It’s really complicated and would be awesome to see a video on. If you could figure out a way to send data faster than half a second (4byte packet) I’m all ears as well. From my understanding due to the 1% duty cycle rule for Lora; it’s not possible to have fast update rates with the technology
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greatscott
I use Lora on Adafruit Feather M0s to transmit temperature/humidity/power/light from my solar powered LiPo units inside my greenhouse. A problem I ran into: the aluminum greenhouse is like a Faraday cage and nearby metal tomato trellises interfered. Also, fogging at night (moisture particles suspended in the air) attenuated the signal. Your metal shed is could attenuate your signals if your antenna is inside it as it appears from your video. Also, keep your Lora away from any USB-3 cables units, that, too will attenuate the signal (at least for my US band 915.
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I use Lora on Adafruit Feather M0s to transmit temperature/humidity/power/light from my solar powered LiPo units inside my greenhouse. A problem I ran into: the aluminum greenhouse is like a Faraday cage and nearby metal tomato trellises interfered. Also, fogging at night (moisture particles suspended in the air) attenuated the signal. Your metal shed is could attenuate your signals if your antenna is inside it as it appears from your video. Also, keep your Lora away from any USB-3 cables units, that, too will attenuate the signal (at least for my US band 915.
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gkeepleft
Hey mate, great video. Just wondering why you didn't just use ESPNow Its got 128 bit aec encryption and a standard pcb trace antenna can communicate over 250 m line of sight. I've tested about 100 m going through a few brick walls too. Seems so much easier and cheaper to just use 3 esp32s. Two for espnow and the other one for wifi inside your house. You literally dont need any external components apart from your pull-down transistor, or what ever you used. You can even get tiny esp32 c3 boards with the integrated serial programmer.
Just a thought.
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Hey mate, great video. Just wondering why you didn't just use ESPNow Its got 128 bit aec encryption and a standard pcb trace antenna can communicate over 250 m line of sight. I've tested about 100 m going through a few brick walls too. Seems so much easier and cheaper to just use 3 esp32s. Two for espnow and the other one for wifi inside your house. You literally dont need any external components apart from your pull-down transistor, or what ever you used. You can even get tiny esp32 c3 boards with the integrated serial programmer.
Just a thought.
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major__kong
One of the reasons WiFi range is limited is because of the ACK timing. When the transmitter and receiver are too far apart, the packet arrives too late, which means the ACK is received too late and you can get a bunch of resends or the sender just gives up. I remember a setting in an old router of mine to increase the wait time. Alternatively, you can try sending via UDP, which doesn't wait for an ACK. A lot of real world radio stuff uses UDP for this reason, and any ACKs or resends get handled at the app layer like STANAG 4586.
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One of the reasons WiFi range is limited is because of the ACK timing. When the transmitter and receiver are too far apart, the packet arrives too late, which means the ACK is received too late and you can get a bunch of resends or the sender just gives up. I remember a setting in an old router of mine to increase the wait time. Alternatively, you can try sending via UDP, which doesn't wait for an ACK. A lot of real world radio stuff uses UDP for this reason, and any ACKs or resends get handled at the app layer like STANAG 4586.
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odin823
I confused. Instead of fixing the door and frame to sturdy up the door and make it more secure, you hung a light curtain What Fix that door frame, Scott. Light Cuban= great idea for extra security, but let's make sure the door is solid. Don't you know someone who can help you with that, if you can't do it yourself Looks like it might need welded. Love you videos, BTW. I try not to miss any. You are so detail oriented with electronics, I am surprised you would let something like that slide.
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I confused. Instead of fixing the door and frame to sturdy up the door and make it more secure, you hung a light curtain What Fix that door frame, Scott. Light Cuban= great idea for extra security, but let's make sure the door is solid. Don't you know someone who can help you with that, if you can't do it yourself Looks like it might need welded. Love you videos, BTW. I try not to miss any. You are so detail oriented with electronics, I am surprised you would let something like that slide.
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Meatlove
I got 2 868 recievers in use.
One for the bresser mqtt weather station reciever and one for the hoymiles open-dtu project.
The first has a somewhat limited range, but the second has really been a set and forget addition to my smart home.
I'm glad these are already projects that require minimal knowledge and a small amount of diy.
Your project also looks promising, but i personally would fix the wifi problem in the shed so you could also have a camera connected there.
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I got 2 868 recievers in use.
One for the bresser mqtt weather station reciever and one for the hoymiles open-dtu project.
The first has a somewhat limited range, but the second has really been a set and forget addition to my smart home.
I'm glad these are already projects that require minimal knowledge and a small amount of diy.
Your project also looks promising, but i personally would fix the wifi problem in the shed so you could also have a camera connected there.
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klauszinser
A few years ago i had bought 2 Heltec units. 20-30 /each. For each unit you need a mobile phone. Then there were regularly firmware updates necessary. Firmware update is not possible anymore out of safety reasons. Right now i wont buy anymore.
Either there should be very cheap units.
Or something independent from a mobile, having a display and keyboard. But that should be in the range of max 40 U$.
Maybe in the future. I had a look at seeedstudio. Not that much.
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A few years ago i had bought 2 Heltec units. 20-30 /each. For each unit you need a mobile phone. Then there were regularly firmware updates necessary. Firmware update is not possible anymore out of safety reasons. Right now i wont buy anymore.
Either there should be very cheap units.
Or something independent from a mobile, having a display and keyboard. But that should be in the range of max 40 U$.
Maybe in the future. I had a look at seeedstudio. Not that much.
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greatscott
I would really love if you could include a video these wifi signal boosters(not the repeaters, ranging from 4w to 10W boosters that are connected between the router and it's antenna. Edup and comfast are the ones I usually see popping up. From resources online/what I can tell it seems that even if they add the 30db boost it wouldn't help unless your area is particularly quiet because of network prototcols, but I could be totally mistaken on this
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I would really love if you could include a video these wifi signal boosters(not the repeaters, ranging from 4w to 10W boosters that are connected between the router and it's antenna. Edup and comfast are the ones I usually see popping up. From resources online/what I can tell it seems that even if they add the 30db boost it wouldn't help unless your area is particularly quiet because of network prototcols, but I could be totally mistaken on this
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nevermind-wp3bf
Why do you need meshtastic for a simple lora signal transmission
You can use a cheeper lora module which you can control with a cheep esp32 to send the signal when the connected sensors on the same esp32 are triggered.
I don't think it should be to hard to make a simple detection sketch (a good llm ai could do that for you) with this kind of configuration and you don't need meshtastic and any other fancy arduino libraries.
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Why do you need meshtastic for a simple lora signal transmission
You can use a cheeper lora module which you can control with a cheep esp32 to send the signal when the connected sensors on the same esp32 are triggered.
I don't think it should be to hard to make a simple detection sketch (a good llm ai could do that for you) with this kind of configuration and you don't need meshtastic and any other fancy arduino libraries.
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aware2action
One thing not clear is, if its using a direct node to node connection, without any nearby(hidden) nodes. In which case reliability is dependent on other device's operation in the vicinity. You could also do a direct link, at fraction of the cost using an NRF24L01module, by throttling(increases sensitivity) the baud rate and improving antenna directionality.
In remote areas(trekking in the wild) LoraWan is definitely helpful though.
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One thing not clear is, if its using a direct node to node connection, without any nearby(hidden) nodes. In which case reliability is dependent on other device's operation in the vicinity. You could also do a direct link, at fraction of the cost using an NRF24L01module, by throttling(increases sensitivity) the baud rate and improving antenna directionality.
In remote areas(trekking in the wild) LoraWan is definitely helpful though.
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greatscott
I made a series of decorative and security RGB LED lights that are along the driveway leading to my domicile. After several years of having these lights the cuter half ask that I somehow make it so that when the first light is triggered. It sets some alarm for her to know that there is someone coming up the driveway. I believe that I will look into the LoRA as a means to implement this. I will let you know what I get set up.
Peace
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I made a series of decorative and security RGB LED lights that are along the driveway leading to my domicile. After several years of having these lights the cuter half ask that I somehow make it so that when the first light is triggered. It sets some alarm for her to know that there is someone coming up the driveway. I believe that I will look into the LoRA as a means to implement this. I will let you know what I get set up.
Peace
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Superkuh2
Nope. There's no magical modulation that gets around lack of line of sight. People pushing these LoRa and other mesh things as if they'll be any better are either just clueless and happened to have line of sight, ignorant and did not actually test, or looking for that sweet sweet cash. I'm not saying they don't work. I'm just saying they don't work any better than wifi or any other line of sight based VHF and up transmitted signal.
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Nope. There's no magical modulation that gets around lack of line of sight. People pushing these LoRa and other mesh things as if they'll be any better are either just clueless and happened to have line of sight, ignorant and did not actually test, or looking for that sweet sweet cash. I'm not saying they don't work. I'm just saying they don't work any better than wifi or any other line of sight based VHF and up transmitted signal.
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haydenc2742
There is also LoRaWAN. which can do ethernet over LoRa.
I am building serveral nodes, I have a Low Profile Solar Meshtastic Car Node, several of those RAK19007 modules, I am currently building an external LoRa Lantern - Mesh Radio to hand up about 15-20 feet on my amateur radio j-pole outside my house. and just ordered a few boards to build my own Ikoka Stick nodes.
These things are pretty fun!
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There is also LoRaWAN. which can do ethernet over LoRa.
I am building serveral nodes, I have a Low Profile Solar Meshtastic Car Node, several of those RAK19007 modules, I am currently building an external LoRa Lantern - Mesh Radio to hand up about 15-20 feet on my amateur radio j-pole outside my house. and just ordered a few boards to build my own Ikoka Stick nodes.
These things are pretty fun!
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major__kong
You shouldn't lay the antenna flat on that barrel. It's designed to have an omni pattern. You only get a good transmission in the plane perpendicular to the antenna. When laying flat, this means you are only getting good transmission in two compass directions. When vertical, you get good transmission in all compass directions. Also, the high the better due to curvature of the earth and obstacles.
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You shouldn't lay the antenna flat on that barrel. It's designed to have an omni pattern. You only get a good transmission in the plane perpendicular to the antenna. When laying flat, this means you are only getting good transmission in two compass directions. When vertical, you get good transmission in all compass directions. Also, the high the better due to curvature of the earth and obstacles.
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cybercluck1776
Good use case to get jnto meshtastic.
20m for me is trench some cat6 territory or use something like a ubuiquiti lr AP. I have 4 cameras running off one AP though my bandwidth requirements were a lot higher than a serial alarm.
Where meshtastic really shines is remote environmental monitoring-1 mile down the creek checking water quality etc.
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Good use case to get jnto meshtastic.
20m for me is trench some cat6 territory or use something like a ubuiquiti lr AP. I have 4 cameras running off one AP though my bandwidth requirements were a lot higher than a serial alarm.
Where meshtastic really shines is remote environmental monitoring-1 mile down the creek checking water quality etc.
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aterxter3437
Long range WiFi You are getting on the borderline of legality, a lot of cheap devices sold on aliexpress are completely illegal in Europe: GSM repeaters, GPS jammers (one guy with a company truck decided to jam the gps to use the truck freely, and shut down Rennes regional airport, France, for several hours, no aircraft could get reliable gps fixes)
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Long range WiFi You are getting on the borderline of legality, a lot of cheap devices sold on aliexpress are completely illegal in Europe: GSM repeaters, GPS jammers (one guy with a company truck decided to jam the gps to use the truck freely, and shut down Rennes regional airport, France, for several hours, no aircraft could get reliable gps fixes)
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trentonplace957
For LoRa you can mess with a couple settings to increase range. Set it to very_long_slow. This will set the Spread Factor (SF) to 12 and decrease the bandwidth to 125mhz and you will get several km range. It will still work fine for your application since you don't need much bandwidth. You can also increase the transmit power in settings
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For LoRa you can mess with a couple settings to increase range. Set it to very_long_slow. This will set the Spread Factor (SF) to 12 and decrease the bandwidth to 125mhz and you will get several km range. It will still work fine for your application since you don't need much bandwidth. You can also increase the transmit power in settings
reply
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