From Tobe's skunkworkshop

[Shaun]

Don't you ever sleep pal.

[Tobe]

There are 24 hrs...8 to work, 8 to play and 8 to sleep!

[Shaun]

[tiptipflyer]

Great work Tobe, as usual.
You never run out of new ideas and new projects.
Always very interesting, sometimes a little over my head but an old dog like me can still learn new tricks.
My greatest respect Tobe.

Cheers
Frank

[Tobe]

Good to hear from you Frank and hope to find you well.
LoRa is a Spread spectrum "system" where the frequencies are software defined and the main purpose is range which of course comes at the expense of band width and commonly used in quite many application and especially by those flying "drones" but then with a s-bus output.
The modern "Duplex" radios i.e. dual band uses this technique and in Europe on 868MHz with a maximum of 25 mW E.R.P.
868 MHz should theoretically give a range of 3-4 times of 2,4 GHz at the same output when for 433 MHZ it's 5-6 times..
The concept of the project...good question but my idea was to see if I could make a simple set where a Tx-module connects to the PPM output of a conventional Encoder with a matching Rx and bypass S-Bus etc and have a very basic F/S set in the Rx as it's programmed.
In my setup you are able to choose between 256 different addresses to make the set "more unique" see it as a frequency plan of 256.
...the truth is that I needed a new challenge to exercise my little grey cells and see if I'm still up to speed in learning new tricks so the old dog wouldn't feel that old!

Cheers

[Pchristy]

A cracking project, and good to hear from you yesterday,Tobe, even if the quality of the call left something to be desired! (Technology, don't you love it! )

Tobe was asking about 459MHz - legal here in the UK for model control (458.5-459.5MHz at 100mW ERP). I can vouch for the fact that range at 100mW is exceptional. Unfortunately spread spectrum is not permitted, though frequency hopping is. (The two are not the same!)

This is probably because when the allocation was made, spread spectrum wasn't an option outside of the military. There was a German made module available some years ago that could operate on 459MHz, but that was narrow band frequency hopping. Also there were a small number of domestically made radios, but these were mostly simple PPM sets. They mostly worked well, though, and I still fly my prototype occasionally (must be over 40 years old now!).

I remember asking a chap from our telecoms regulator about spread spectrum on 459MHz some years ago. His opinion was that he could see no reason for it being denied, but a request would have to be submitted by a representative organisation, like the BMFA. Then they would have to consult with other users of the band (mostly paging systems, industrial telemetry and control), but he didn't believe there would be any objections.

However, those discussions got lost in the rush to 2.4 GHz, so for now, 459 MHz is narrow band only.

--
Pete

[Tobe]

Here comes a picture of my LoRa set up.

To the left the Tx module which connects to encoders ppm output and to the right the Rx which works like any standard ones.
The set up is 8 channels.
I will post whenever the weather gets more decent video and more info of the progress. At the moment I'm running in the 868mhz section of LoRa with an output of 25 mW e.i.r.p in accordance with CE regulations and it's what Jeti specify for their dualband system. The Rx has an LED that shows if the Rx has been in F/S mode under a session and for the moment I have only seen it when I turn the Tx off & on.

[Al Clark]

Very nice as usual Tobe! You must never sleep!