While the abuse concerns should be addressed off list, I think there may be benefit from some basic discussion about this network. I'd be willing to bet most are unaware of this network, that it mostly uses LoRA modulation to build a decentralized network for slower speed data applications.
I feel there is a good amount of overlap to what we do in ham radio and there could be things learned from it.
I'd be interested in knowing who is using the helium network (package delivery folks I'd assume, among others) and what light weight protocols and data they use.
A few years back someone at a DCC meeting did suggest the concept of just such a network for the internet of things. And there have been a few papers on LoRA.
I'm not interested in the crypto aspect of the network nor does that fit the discussion here. But if the hardware entry cost was lower or there was a way to build your own gateway I'd probably be doing that. Pity there isn't enough of density of interested hams locally to do what they are doing.
So is there anyone else doing things with LoRa chipset enabled hardware with dialup speed applications in or out of ham radio.?
On 2/24/22 20:37, Steve L via 44Net wrote:
So is there anyone else doing things with LoRa chipset enabled hardware with dialup speed applications in or out of ham radio.?
A while ago I thought that maybe LoRA equipment (which is also available for the 70cm band) would be suitable to emulate the speeds of 1200bps packet radio and run applications that were common on that (like APRS or keyboard-keyboard chat), but after reading a bit about the principles of operation and expected amounts of data to be transferred I considered it to be not so suitable for that.
Of course it would be possible (and I think it is sometimes done) to setup a local network based on LoRA on the amateur bands. However, people have also started other projects for UHF modems that appear to be more interesting.
Rob