Invector Labs Launches a Long-Range Dev Board: The Challenger RP2040 LoRa
Designed for projects where Wi-Fi simply won't reach, the Challenger RP2040 LoRa offers long-range connectivity.
Invector Labs has launched another Challenger RP2040 board, this time offering long-range low-power wireless connectivity via an on-board LoRa Transceiver: the imaginatively-named Challenger RP2040 LoRa.
"This is a spin-off from our Challenger RP2040 WiFi board but we have replaced the Wi-Fi module with a low power LoRa radio module from Hope RF," the company explains of its latest board design. "The transceiver features a LoRa long range modem that provides ultra-long range spread spectrum communication and high interference immunity whilst minimizing current consumption."
The original Challenger RP2040 WiFi was unveiled six months ago, itself a successor to the companies earlier Challenger M0 WiFi. The board, which uses an Adafruit Feather form factor, has a Raspberry Pi RP2040 dual-core Arm Cortex-M0+ microcontroller with 8MB of flash plus a Wi-Fi radio to address the lack of network capability on the rival Raspberry Pi Pico.
The Challenger RP2040 LoRa is near-identical in terms of layout and pinout, bar the inclusion of the LoRa transceiver module and a compact U.FL connector for an external antenna. There are still physical boot and reset buttons, a connector and charge circuit for an optional battery, and a USB Type-C connector for power and data, along with unpopulated headers across both sides following the Feather pinout.
"The RFM95W [LoRa module] is connected to the RP2040 via SPI channel 1 and a few GPIOs that [are] required for signaling," the company notes. Said module offers a programmable bitrate up to 300Kbps, a receive current of 10.3mA with 200nA register retention, and support for FSK, GFSK, MSK, GMSK, and OOK modulation as well as LoRa.
The Challenger RP2040 LoRa is listed on the Invector Labs website now, but pricing has not yet been set.