6 ms·

There used to be a good wikipedia article about LoraWan, which is better than this (for IoT) in just about every way, but it has been replaced with this: https:

by blhack 11y ago

There used to be a good wikipedia article about LoraWan, which is better than this (for IoT) in just about every way, but it has been replaced with this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LoRaWAN LoraWan consumes power at a similar rate that BLE does, except it has a 20km range. You're talking about months (or even years, depending on your interval) of usefulness out of a CR2032 coincell battery. Sidenote: the removal of the wikipedia page on this irks me more than it probably should. They're claiming a copyright problem because some of the text of the page was taken from the Lora Alliance's official website. https://www.lora-alliance.org/What-Is-LoRa/Technology https://www.lora-alliance.org/What-Is-LoRa/Technology

mschuster91 11y ago
> They're claiming a copyright problem because some of the text of the page was taken from the Lora Alliance's official website. Stolen content (i.e. content not explicitly licensed as GFDL/CC by the author) is stolen content.
- blhack 11y ago
  >Stolen content (i.e. content not explicitly licensed as GFDL/CC by the author) is stolen content. Do you mean by wikipedia's definition of stolen? Because some things, like for instance: the description of Lora taken from the website that exists to provide descriptions of Lora to people, has an implicit usability. Like I said, this irked me more than it probably should. I totally get sometimes stuff will get caught in the margins.
  - mschuster91 11y ago
    Wikipedia's mission is NOT about usability, but to provide an encyclopedia that can be used, edited, forked, reproduced EVERYWHERE without anyone having to fear lawyer attacks. It's not a "free as in free beer" encyclopedia, it's a "free as in truly free" encyclopedia. (Yes I know that this is only valid for the text content, images (e.g. logos) and screenshots are not free but used under different legal regimes in different countries)
    - karmakaze 11y ago
      With all the fundraising activity, it should be about usability and put some aside for those instances.
    - sangnoir 11y ago
      > Wikipedia's mission is NOT about usability, but to provide an encyclopedia that can be used, edited, forked, reproduced EVERYWHERE without anyone having to fear lawyer attacks. To that, I say [citation needed]. Where in their mission statement do they state this particular stance on lawyer attacks?
  - Hello71 11y ago
    > the description of Lora taken from the website that exists to provide descriptions of Lora to people, has an implicit usability that's not how copyright law works. you may argue that it should work that way, but it does not work that way unless you petition Congress to modify it
    - zenir 11y ago
      Still wouldn't change much because, thanks god, the US law is not global ^^
      - tracker1 11y ago
        The U.S. has trade negotiations which tend to include mutual or compatible copyright law with most of the countries in the world.
        kzrdude 11y ago
        Yes, they are among the biggest copyright aggressors of the world. Just like L Lessig, I care about common sense copyright policy, which forces me to care about reforming the U.S. campaign finance system so that congress can represent the people again.
    - cookiecaper 11y ago
      Yeah, but it's a relatively safe bet that an organization would rather be represented by their own carefully-reviewed, professionally-crafted verbiage than one hastily thrown together by a volunteer editor, and thus would not pursue action against the publisher. I'm not saying that Wikipedia should use content without the appropriate licensure, but in practice, copyright is violated as a matter of routine to provide some fairly basic services. Copyright law should be amended to prevent liability for conventional uses.
      - stouset 11y ago
        Multiply that "relatively safe bet" times the millions of times this would happen if Wikipedia relaxed their stance.
  - ghaff 11y ago
    Then the organization should have provided the text under an appropriate free license if they wanted it to be broadly reused. (Which is actually a good idea and more organizations should probably do for boilerplate they'd like others to cut and paste.)
    - eru 11y ago
      Organizations would put the boiler plate under a "You can copy and paste, but no modifications, please." licence. Wikipedia would need special support (machine enforced or not) for blocks of text that can only be used or removed in their entirety, but not changed. Come to think of it, that's not too different from how quotations work. So they might be able to deal with them.
- obituary_latte 11y ago
  I hereby declare "woo only, soon only, double aggrandizingly you bodly - rigatoni" all rights reserved. I am the author of this. I reserve all rights to this phrase forevermore.
- nine_k 11y ago
  I wonder how much text from a public (albeit copyrighted) source can be quoted under fair use, with attribution and all.
  - cooper12 11y ago
    Here's what an unofficial essay on Wikipedia says and I think it sums it up sensibly: > The copied material should not comprise a substantial portion of the work being quoted, and a longer quotation should not be used where a shorter quotation would express the same information. What constitutes a substantial portion depends on many factors, such as the length of the original work and how central the quoted text is to that work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations#Copyrighted_material_and_fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations#Copyright...
gh02t 11y ago
Wow, it claims 2-5km urban and up to 45km rural! Important question though, is there an affordable module available (ideally also easy to use)? Sniffing around, all I can find is modules costing $45 or more, which kind of kills my enthusiasm for using it in personal projects.
- deutronium 11y ago
  Have a look for RFM98W (434Mhz) or RFM95W (868MHz) on aliexpress/ebay, they're around $14 there. I know in the UK high altitude balloon community they've used them in flights - http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1850 http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1850 Although FSK works just as well in the case of balloons.
  - awqrre 11y ago
    Ebay has them for less then $10, + $2 shipping (RFM98W (434Mhz) or RFM95W (868MHz))
tommoor 11y ago
LoraWan is super interesting for IOT but as far as I understand it acts more like a traditional radio transmitter? Great for collecting data from lots of discrete sensors but less for bi-directional data transfer
- petra 11y ago
  I think there's also a bi-directional mode for it.
  - andrey-g 11y ago
    Isn't one for LoRaWAN specifically, but there are other options like Weightless-W (which doesn't have any hardware released for it yet).
    - petra 11y ago
      The FAQ says bi-directional: http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora/LoRa-FAQs.pdf http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora/LoRa-FAQs.pdf
- hodwik 11y ago
  It's bidirectional, that's the whole point. If it was unidirectional it would be no better than standard radio.
bravo22 11y ago
LoRa has long range but throughputs is extremely low. It is useful for some applications but not for all.
- hodwik 11y ago
  For most sensors throughput is not the problem -- it's distance, and power consumption.
bsder 11y ago
Except that I can't buy it, it doesn't seem to have a stack, and doesn't have any open implementations to examine. But, other than that, LoraWan is better. Uh, yeah. Come back when LoraWan is shipping something other than vapor.
- hodwik 11y ago
  So Sematech and Tata's LoraWan plan in India is vaporware? They claimed successful tests, and said their network is open to testing end-to-end by IoT developers. This is a serious question, I just moved most of my stock portfolio into Sematech after that news. If Sematech's LoraWan is real, this is the best pureplay futurist stock I've seen since Tobii.
  - bsder 11y ago
    UWB was a wonderful technology and claimed successful tests and was open to developers. So was WiMAX (which actually did work). Where are they now? Almost all the TI low-power RF stuff is real. Anything LoraWAN claims could have been done with these kinds of TI chips: http://www.ti.com/product/cc1125 http://www.ti.com/product/cc1125 So, why hasn't it? Mostly because these frequencies need big external antennas. TI has a very nice whitepaper about trying to create integrated PCB antennas for these lower frequencies and how much power you lose (answer--a whole lot). I don't think people are going to be very happy strapping a 6 inch whip antenna onto their tiny LED light. And, these TI chips actually can run off a coin cell. Unlike the loraWAN stuff which flags Tx power consumption as up to 100mA. Coin cells are still ruled out. That's not an improvement over, well, anything. And, I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. This is Microchip. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor.
    - jotux 11y ago
      >I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor. As of a few minutes ago seven in stock at mouser: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/DM164138/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtzPgOfznR9QQ4aSu6LfLHpY%252bN8idkeT5Q%3d http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/DM1...

by blhack 11y ago

mschuster91 11y ago

> They're claiming a copyright problem because some of the text of the page was taken from the Lora Alliance's official website. Stolen content (i.e. content not explicitly licensed as GFDL/CC by the author) is stolen content.

blhack 11y ago
>Stolen content (i.e. content not explicitly licensed as GFDL/CC by the author) is stolen content. Do you mean by wikipedia's definition of stolen? Because some things, like for instance: the description of Lora taken from the website that exists to provide descriptions of Lora to people, has an implicit usability. Like I said, this irked me more than it probably should. I totally get sometimes stuff will get caught in the margins.
- mschuster91 11y ago
  Wikipedia's mission is NOT about usability, but to provide an encyclopedia that can be used, edited, forked, reproduced EVERYWHERE without anyone having to fear lawyer attacks. It's not a "free as in free beer" encyclopedia, it's a "free as in truly free" encyclopedia. (Yes I know that this is only valid for the text content, images (e.g. logos) and screenshots are not free but used under different legal regimes in different countries)
  - karmakaze 11y ago
    With all the fundraising activity, it should be about usability and put some aside for those instances.
  - sangnoir 11y ago
    > Wikipedia's mission is NOT about usability, but to provide an encyclopedia that can be used, edited, forked, reproduced EVERYWHERE without anyone having to fear lawyer attacks. To that, I say [citation needed]. Where in their mission statement do they state this particular stance on lawyer attacks?
- Hello71 11y ago
  > the description of Lora taken from the website that exists to provide descriptions of Lora to people, has an implicit usability that's not how copyright law works. you may argue that it should work that way, but it does not work that way unless you petition Congress to modify it
  - zenir 11y ago
    Still wouldn't change much because, thanks god, the US law is not global ^^
    - tracker1 11y ago
      The U.S. has trade negotiations which tend to include mutual or compatible copyright law with most of the countries in the world.
      - kzrdude 11y ago
        Yes, they are among the biggest copyright aggressors of the world. Just like L Lessig, I care about common sense copyright policy, which forces me to care about reforming the U.S. campaign finance system so that congress can represent the people again.
  - cookiecaper 11y ago
    Yeah, but it's a relatively safe bet that an organization would rather be represented by their own carefully-reviewed, professionally-crafted verbiage than one hastily thrown together by a volunteer editor, and thus would not pursue action against the publisher. I'm not saying that Wikipedia should use content without the appropriate licensure, but in practice, copyright is violated as a matter of routine to provide some fairly basic services. Copyright law should be amended to prevent liability for conventional uses.
    - stouset 11y ago
      Multiply that "relatively safe bet" times the millions of times this would happen if Wikipedia relaxed their stance.
- ghaff 11y ago
  Then the organization should have provided the text under an appropriate free license if they wanted it to be broadly reused. (Which is actually a good idea and more organizations should probably do for boilerplate they'd like others to cut and paste.)
  - eru 11y ago
    Organizations would put the boiler plate under a "You can copy and paste, but no modifications, please." licence. Wikipedia would need special support (machine enforced or not) for blocks of text that can only be used or removed in their entirety, but not changed. Come to think of it, that's not too different from how quotations work. So they might be able to deal with them.
obituary_latte 11y ago
I hereby declare "woo only, soon only, double aggrandizingly you bodly - rigatoni" all rights reserved. I am the author of this. I reserve all rights to this phrase forevermore.
nine_k 11y ago
I wonder how much text from a public (albeit copyrighted) source can be quoted under fair use, with attribution and all.
- cooper12 11y ago
  Here's what an unofficial essay on Wikipedia says and I think it sums it up sensibly: > The copied material should not comprise a substantial portion of the work being quoted, and a longer quotation should not be used where a shorter quotation would express the same information. What constitutes a substantial portion depends on many factors, such as the length of the original work and how central the quoted text is to that work. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations#Copyrighted_material_and_fair_use https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Quotations#Copyright...

gh02t 11y ago

Wow, it claims 2-5km urban and up to 45km rural! Important question though, is there an affordable module available (ideally also easy to use)? Sniffing around, all I can find is modules costing $45 or more, which kind of kills my enthusiasm for using it in personal projects.

deutronium 11y ago
Have a look for RFM98W (434Mhz) or RFM95W (868MHz) on aliexpress/ebay, they're around $14 there. I know in the UK high altitude balloon community they've used them in flights - http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1850 http://www.daveakerman.com/?p=1850 Although FSK works just as well in the case of balloons.
- awqrre 11y ago
  Ebay has them for less then $10, + $2 shipping (RFM98W (434Mhz) or RFM95W (868MHz))

tommoor 11y ago

LoraWan is super interesting for IOT but as far as I understand it acts more like a traditional radio transmitter? Great for collecting data from lots of discrete sensors but less for bi-directional data transfer

petra 11y ago
I think there's also a bi-directional mode for it.
- andrey-g 11y ago
  Isn't one for LoRaWAN specifically, but there are other options like Weightless-W (which doesn't have any hardware released for it yet).
  - petra 11y ago
    The FAQ says bi-directional: http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora/LoRa-FAQs.pdf http://www.semtech.com/wireless-rf/lora/LoRa-FAQs.pdf
hodwik 11y ago
It's bidirectional, that's the whole point. If it was unidirectional it would be no better than standard radio.

bravo22 11y ago

LoRa has long range but throughputs is extremely low. It is useful for some applications but not for all.

hodwik 11y ago
For most sensors throughput is not the problem -- it's distance, and power consumption.

bsder 11y ago

Except that I can't buy it, it doesn't seem to have a stack, and doesn't have any open implementations to examine. But, other than that, LoraWan is better. Uh, yeah. Come back when LoraWan is shipping something other than vapor.

hodwik 11y ago
So Sematech and Tata's LoraWan plan in India is vaporware? They claimed successful tests, and said their network is open to testing end-to-end by IoT developers. This is a serious question, I just moved most of my stock portfolio into Sematech after that news. If Sematech's LoraWan is real, this is the best pureplay futurist stock I've seen since Tobii.
- bsder 11y ago
  UWB was a wonderful technology and claimed successful tests and was open to developers. So was WiMAX (which actually did work). Where are they now? Almost all the TI low-power RF stuff is real. Anything LoraWAN claims could have been done with these kinds of TI chips: http://www.ti.com/product/cc1125 http://www.ti.com/product/cc1125 So, why hasn't it? Mostly because these frequencies need big external antennas. TI has a very nice whitepaper about trying to create integrated PCB antennas for these lower frequencies and how much power you lose (answer--a whole lot). I don't think people are going to be very happy strapping a 6 inch whip antenna onto their tiny LED light. And, these TI chips actually can run off a coin cell. Unlike the loraWAN stuff which flags Tx power consumption as up to 100mA. Coin cells are still ruled out. That's not an improvement over, well, anything. And, I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. This is Microchip. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor.
  - jotux 11y ago
    >I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor. As of a few minutes ago seven in stock at mouser: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/DM164138/?qs=sGAEpiMZZMtzPgOfznR9QQ4aSu6LfLHpY%252bN8idkeT5Q%3d http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/DM1...