fifer
Well-Known Member
Inspired by the excellent work of others on this forum I've been looking into how I might create a boat monitor for remotely measuring useful parameters such as battery voltage, temp etc.
I've stumbled across The things network which is an open facility (free to access) to allow IOT data transfer via LoRaWAN (Long range WAN). In principle its much the same as wifi and bluetooth, except it works on a fixed frequency and is very low bandwidth, but with long range - up to 22km or so it is claimed. Its designed for IOT so is very low power consumption. The device requires a local gateway to connect to, although due to the range, it doesn't have to be particularly local. For example heres the stations available on Anglesey:
Devices such as the LoPy4 are micropython oriented, low power processors designed to transfer data across the LoRaWAN network. The LoPy4 has extensive I/O on board and can handle ADC much the. same as an Arduino, meaning it is very able to interface with sensors. It can also handle two way transmission on the LoRaWAN network meaning it can be used to sense and actuate if a demand signal is sent to it. The power consumption in LoRa transmit is 15mA, whilst it only uses 25uA in deep sleep. In idle it consumes around 35mA (outside of any radios), which compares very favourably with RPis etc.
Micropython supports uMQTT which is a messaging protocol design for low bandwidth transmission. Rather than using signal K, or another protocol the LoPy4 will directly interpret and broadcast the data in MQTT format.
Adafruit IO is a portal which can act as a web based tool to view and interpret data from your thing on the internet. It provides a toolkit of dials, graphs, gauges and other useful things to help visualise data. There are also a variety of inputs, through which you can send triggers back to the LoPy4 if required. The best bit is its free for lighter users (such as boat monitors!). It has native ability to parse incoming uMQTT messages.
Another interesting development is Openplotter developing a soon to be available IOT MQTT broker. Watch this space!
So overall, for the cost of the LoPy4, its antenna, sensors and some bits and bobs to tie it all together you can have a long range remote boat monitor with no ongoing costs and minimal current consumption!
I'm going to go ahead and buy one today and start playing around with it at home. See if I can get it to talk to the local receiver here and send some basic data to Adafruit as a proof of concept.
I've stumbled across The things network which is an open facility (free to access) to allow IOT data transfer via LoRaWAN (Long range WAN). In principle its much the same as wifi and bluetooth, except it works on a fixed frequency and is very low bandwidth, but with long range - up to 22km or so it is claimed. Its designed for IOT so is very low power consumption. The device requires a local gateway to connect to, although due to the range, it doesn't have to be particularly local. For example heres the stations available on Anglesey:
Devices such as the LoPy4 are micropython oriented, low power processors designed to transfer data across the LoRaWAN network. The LoPy4 has extensive I/O on board and can handle ADC much the. same as an Arduino, meaning it is very able to interface with sensors. It can also handle two way transmission on the LoRaWAN network meaning it can be used to sense and actuate if a demand signal is sent to it. The power consumption in LoRa transmit is 15mA, whilst it only uses 25uA in deep sleep. In idle it consumes around 35mA (outside of any radios), which compares very favourably with RPis etc.
Micropython supports uMQTT which is a messaging protocol design for low bandwidth transmission. Rather than using signal K, or another protocol the LoPy4 will directly interpret and broadcast the data in MQTT format.
Adafruit IO is a portal which can act as a web based tool to view and interpret data from your thing on the internet. It provides a toolkit of dials, graphs, gauges and other useful things to help visualise data. There are also a variety of inputs, through which you can send triggers back to the LoPy4 if required. The best bit is its free for lighter users (such as boat monitors!). It has native ability to parse incoming uMQTT messages.
Another interesting development is Openplotter developing a soon to be available IOT MQTT broker. Watch this space!
So overall, for the cost of the LoPy4, its antenna, sensors and some bits and bobs to tie it all together you can have a long range remote boat monitor with no ongoing costs and minimal current consumption!
I'm going to go ahead and buy one today and start playing around with it at home. See if I can get it to talk to the local receiver here and send some basic data to Adafruit as a proof of concept.
