Low Power Solutions Launches LoRaWAN-miniBrick and megaBrick Arduino-Compatible Dev Boards
Built around the RFM95 radio module — to be sourced separately — the LoRaWAN-miniBrick and -megaBrick are programmable in the Arduino IDE.
Paris-based Low Power Solutions has launched a pair of Arduino-compatible development boards for LoRaWAN wireless projects, using a Feather-style form factor and a Microchip ATmega1284P or ATmega328PB microcontroller.
Designed due to the "unavailability of inexpensive low-power MCU boards with on-board LoRa transceiver," according to Low Power Solutions, the two boards are designed to make it as simple as possible to connect a project to a LoRaWAN low-power long-range wide-area network. Both are built around the popular RFM95 LoRa radio module, which is then linked to the on-board microcontroller.
The LoRaWAN-miniBrick is designed to mimic an Arduino Pro Mini, using the ATmega328PB microcontroller and programmed using the Arduino Pro Mini 3.3V 8MHz board definition built into the Arduino IDE. The larger LoRaWAN-megaBrick, by contrast, offers considerably more IO on the ATmega1284P microcontroller and requires the MightyCore board definition core to be added.
In both cases, the development boards include SMA and U.FL antenna connection options, a breadboard-compatible layout, and compatibility with the arduino-lmic LoRaWAN library — once the examples have had a few pin definitions altered, at least.
The LoRaWAN-megaBrick and LoRaWAN-miniBrick are now available from the Low Power Solutions Tindie store, priced at $15 and $9 respectively without antenna or connector — but neither, it must be noted, come with the RFM95 radio module, which must be sourced elsewhere and soldered into place on the top of each board.