3 ms·

Does anyone know what kind of range you get with BTLE sensors like this? I'd think a decent distance would be required in most cases, and BTLE is meant to be sh

Does anyone know what kind of range you get with BTLE sensors like this? I'd think a decent distance would be required in most cases, and BTLE is meant to be short range. A while back I built a LoRa device and we got really good range, 10km at least without having to try too hard, the plan was to deploy 100's of these so it was complicated ensuring communications without collisions, and also this was for a controller not a sensor, which is much harder on the battery as the device needs to listen periodically for updates.

poink 4y ago
Tens of meters, highly variable in range and speed, not super reliable.
arcticbull 4y ago
BLE 5.2 has a range of up to 240m. It'll depend on antenna design and ambient conditions but 100m should be easy.
- sgt 4y ago
  WiFi will do 50 meters, but depending on layout and obstacles, you could be looking at 20. Might be the same for BLE?
  - arcticbull 4y ago
    5.2 in particular extended the range significantly. You're right, I'm confident layout and obstacles will reduce the range.
defrost 4y ago
That was my first question also - mention in replies are 100-240 m rages which is useful to know. FWiW here in W.Australia 4,000 acres is a mean size for farms (with a skew distribution) .. roughly 4 km a side for a square boundary. I can see these being useful for occassional monitoring around a central solar powered collector - with stakes and flags on the sensors tags so they can be picked up again and recovered as wheat grows. These are the practical issues of modern grain farming (and many farms are much much larger - the mean is skewed by many small plot farms while the bulk of the industry revolves around a few hundred much much larger concerns).
- jdswain 4y ago
  So Lora is probably more practical. We had to trigger a solenoid so needed a bit more power anyway, but could reliably run off a LiIon battery with a solar panel for recharging. Makes the whole package more complicated, but it worked well. The extra range or Lora means I didn't have to implement a mesh protocol. I wasn't looking forward to having to test a mesh network, point to point is much easier.

poink 4y ago

Tens of meters, highly variable in range and speed, not super reliable.

arcticbull 4y ago

BLE 5.2 has a range of up to 240m. It'll depend on antenna design and ambient conditions but 100m should be easy.

sgt 4y ago
WiFi will do 50 meters, but depending on layout and obstacles, you could be looking at 20. Might be the same for BLE?
- arcticbull 4y ago
  5.2 in particular extended the range significantly. You're right, I'm confident layout and obstacles will reduce the range.

defrost 4y ago

That was my first question also - mention in replies are 100-240 m rages which is useful to know. FWiW here in W.Australia 4,000 acres is a mean size for farms (with a skew distribution) .. roughly 4 km a side for a square boundary. I can see these being useful for occassional monitoring around a central solar powered collector - with stakes and flags on the sensors tags so they can be picked up again and recovered as wheat grows. These are the practical issues of modern grain farming (and many farms are much much larger - the mean is skewed by many small plot farms while the bulk of the industry revolves around a few hundred much much larger concerns).

jdswain 4y ago
So Lora is probably more practical. We had to trigger a solenoid so needed a bit more power anyway, but could reliably run off a LiIon battery with a solar panel for recharging. Makes the whole package more complicated, but it worked well. The extra range or Lora means I didn't have to implement a mesh protocol. I wasn't looking forward to having to test a mesh network, point to point is much easier.