
LoRa Range Testing in San Francisco - runesoerensen
http://blog.beepnetworks.com/2016/09/loras-wireless-range-is-bananas-a-first-look-at-cellular-for-iot-in-san-francisco/
======
phurley
It does not look like your target market, but I imagine this would be ideal
for pet/valuable tracking. Put it in a collar or bike seat and if your fido
goes for a stroll and does not come back you can search much faster with an
easy drive down the road. Same thing to help find a stolen bike.

If the transmitter could be inductively charged in a dog crate or where I park
my bike -- it would be very convenient too. Ping time could be much slower,
even once a minute would be plenty fast. Appears you could get 24 hours
transmit and gps without too much trouble in a pretty small package.

~~~
a13n
Seems like the police could bait bikes with this technology to make a serious
dent on bike theft in their city.

~~~
aceperry
You'd have to hide the antenna well to do this.

~~~
retbull
Inside the frame would still work just fine if you used the frame as the
antenna and if they want to get it out they have to destroy the bike so
they're out a any money they were intending to make anyway.

------
matt_knight
Shameless plug: Have a look at my GNURadio OOT transceiver if you're
interested in LoRa and SDR. [https://github.com/BastilleResearch/gr-
lora](https://github.com/BastilleResearch/gr-lora)

Here is a summary of my black box/blind signal analysis that informed its
design. [https://github.com/matt-
knight/research/tree/master/2016_08_...](https://github.com/matt-
knight/research/tree/master/2016_08_05_defcon_lora)

------
PaulHoule
I'd like to see how it does in rural areas. There's a gap in the market for
GPS horse trackers because you can't count on any particular communications
network, unless you use licensed amateur radio APRS.

~~~
mhb_eng
I'd be interested in near-shore(a few miles out and cell service is
unusable/you don't have a high thoroughput requirement). There are plenty of
"nearish" ocean applications that could benefit from an extended range without
requiring iridium(where packet costs can be a killer).

~~~
slewis
Shawn from Beep here. These use-cases sound really interesting. Send me an
email? shawn at beepnetworks dot com

~~~
ismail
Hey what are your thoughts on sigfox? They got an investment from Samsung who
are apparently integrating into their devices. Will this play out like vhs vs
betamax?

~~~
av500
the overall verdict from Lora alliance members on Sigfox is that they are big
on words but small on revenue or customers. add grain of salt

~~~
nicolsc
~~Disclaimer : Sigfox employee ~~

Big on words, but not speaking about others ;)

I'd suggest anyone interested in LPWAN (be it Sigfox, LoraWAN or else) to get
its own idea by field testing. Talk is cheap. Sigfox coverage is available in
25 countries, including some large US cities (SF, NYC, Chicago, Atlanta, ..)
[http://www.sigfox.com/coverage](http://www.sigfox.com/coverage)

Get in touch if interested by more info about Sigfox, solutions for
developers, etc.. [http://makers.sigfox.com](http://makers.sigfox.com)

------
dbrgn
To see more coverage tests with heterogenous devices on the things network
([https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/)), see
[http://ttnmapper.org/](http://ttnmapper.org/).

The most interesting place to see is in the Netherlands, followed by the
Zürich area in Switzerland.

In my experience it's easy to get miles of range when you have line of sight.
Just look at the measurement from nearby Lucerne to Zürich (Switzerland).
That's around 50-60km. If you have buildings in the way, things get tougher.
Putting up gateways high on the roof helps.

The Things Network Forum
([https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/](https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/))
is always a good place to talk about these things.

------
OrdaGarb
I'm rural and have a lot of things sending data to a central node for
collection. I found LoRa interesting, but sadly none of the modules offered
native encryption capabilities. Ended up using RFM69HW modules with AES128 in
the same band and still get pretty good range, up to a mile+ NLoS (but not
through 300m hills either..)

I imagine the low throughput of LoRa would make encryption a greater challenge
than with other modules, but maybe there are other reasons for that.

~~~
paulgerhardt
Some of the modules have dedicated native encryption coprocessors such as the
Laird RM186 - it's still easy enough to shoot your toe off though. I would
argue there is negligible benefit for an encryption coprocessor (it's usually
just AES ECB anyway) - you're either better off using a software
implementation of ChaCha20/Poly1305 or a dedicated TPM.

------
wwkeyboard
If you are curious about tropospheric ducting this[1] site shows openings
determined by looking at what packets are coming through APRS igateways. Some
of the LoRa stuff runs on UHF so it could be subject to similar openings(like
the huge one over the midwestern US right now.

[1] [http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/](http://aprs.mountainlake.k12.mn.us/)

~~~
PaulHoule
Troop is not going to be so strong as it is in 2 meter (140-144 MHz) band but
900 can bounce strongly off meteor trails, the moon, etc. Reflections off
airplanes could be a big deal too.

Sporadic long range channels could be a bug and not a feature for this kind of
system because if you are not a ham who thinks it is a blast to talk to
someone 500 miles away on a a handheld, you want a radio system to work
predictably and not be interfered with by distant stations.

------
dfrey
Is it still the case that LoRa is a single vendor proprietary technology? When
I looked into it a bit it seemed like only Semtech produced LoRa chips and
that it wasn't an open standard like 802.11, so it is unlikely that we will
see offers from other vendors.

~~~
slewis
I believe Microchip licensed the IP from Semtech and has made their own chips:
[http://www.microchip.com/design-centers/wireless-
connectivit...](http://www.microchip.com/design-centers/wireless-
connectivity/embedded-wireless/lora-technology)

~~~
dfrey
Thanks for the link. I hope Semtech makes it completely open in the near
future. I think that is the #1 thing holding LoRa back from being a massive
success.

------
siscia
Shameless plug.

I am working as consultant for a startup building a backend for LoRa devices.
If you have any question from the backend software point of view feel free to
write me :)

email in the profile.

~~~
hiddenkrypt
How does this sort of tech handle large scale use? Living in an apartment
where all but one corner is in range of 60+ traditional access points has been
a huge pain for my connectivity. I can only imagine it would be worse when
you're in range of everybody in miles.

~~~
slewis
It's a great point. A smart network needs to scale down the transmit power of
its nodes and gateways as the network density increases.

~~~
siscia
Hummm actually is more about the distance (in the radio topology) between the
nodes and the gateway. Closer are the gateway to the nodes less power you
need.

~~~
slewis
Yes, so if you have a uniform distribution of nodes and gateways over space, a
node's nearest gateway gets closer as network density increases.

~~~
siscia
Definitely, but the philosophy that I usually see is that once your gateway
cover an area you may want to add a second one (to cover in case of failure)
but no more.

So the distribution is not uniform... On the other way, once an area is
covered, more and more nodes are added.

------
creeble
Anyone remember Metricom?

900mhz, miles of range, dial-up modem speeds.

~~~
ghshephard
Yes, yes indeed. Changed my life in 1998 when I no longer had to be in the
office when on Pager Duty. Just velcroed a ricochet modem to my laptop and I
was good to go from anywhere. We kind of take that convenience for granted
these days.

------
matt_wulfeck
I find this technology incredibly exciting. I'm waiting until cell phones use
it in conjunction with mesh networks to create wide adhoc networks in places
without cell service. There's some fun app ideas there.

Unfortunately the spectrum that's available for this type of thing varies
significantly country-by-country, so it's unlikely to be added to a major
phone maker.

------
blhack
As somebody working in the IoT space (specifically telemedicine), Lora is the
technology that excites me the _most_. It really does sound like a magic
bullet that really actually does solve a lot of real connectivity problems.

Go beep!

BTW, so, uh...hey beep, wanna sponsor a hackathon for this stuff this spring?

~~~
slewis
Thanks!

You mean in 9 months? We're hoping to do one earlier than that :). Hit me up:
shawn at beepnetworks dot com

------
jordz
There are limitation to do with the Duty Cycles in LoRa networks which we've
found inhibits certain real time applications. It effectively limits the
number of "messages" you can send during a specific time frame.

~~~
slewis
Shawn from Beep here. Are you referring to LoRaWAN networks specifically? I'm
always down to talk wireless schemes. Hit me up (email in my profile).

We go beyond LoRaWAN with our own protocol for some use cases.

For those following along: LoRa is a wireless encoding technique (PHY layer),
LoRaWAN is a protocol for how a large group of devices should structure their
packets (MAC layer).

~~~
av500
what SF and bandwidth were you using for the range tests? what packet lengths?

------
gp10
I wonder what the frequency of operation is -- 315, 433 or 869 MHz?

~~~
thelambentonion
915 MHz in the US.

EDIT: Actually I suppose since it isn't LoRaWAN, it could be 433 MHz.

~~~
ac29
433MHz isn't unlicensed spectrum in the US, its in an amateur radio band.
Wouldn't be legal for commercial use like this.

------
dmritard96
Directionality. If you have a single gateway with tons of power for tx, is it
ultra sensitive for RX and what the requirements on the end devices from a
power perspective?

~~~
slewis
Yes -137dBm sensitivity: [http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/rf-
transceivers/sx1272/](http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/rf-
transceivers/sx1272/)

In the blog post we were using 27dBm transmissions. At that level the radio
and power amplifier draw about 1.5W. If a transmission takes .3seconds that's
.5Watt-seconds. So with a single AA battery (about 5Wh) you can do 40000
transmissions.

Transmissions can be much shorter in time depending on radio parameters, by a
factor of 32 at most, but range can be affected.

------
wyldfire
What's the throughput like for LoRa?

~~~
jotux
0.3 kbps to 50 kbps is what they advertise.

~~~
cobookman
I believe that's total bandwidth, and divided between all active devices on
the network. Vs 0.3 - 50 kbps per device.

------
awqrre
Some are working on decoding the LoRa protocol with an RTL-SDR:
[https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora](https://revspace.nl/DecodingLora) .

------
god_bless_texas
I wonder if Beep has done any testing with Mavlink. I think 50kbps is pushing
it unless you turn off packet repeats.

------
notanintern
Bernal heights is labeled incorrectly. Its north of 280, not south of it.

~~~
slewis
Ah you mean on the topo map, not the Google map at the top. Thanks.

