#Idea# Xiao LoRa-E5

[reivilo]

After reading the specification of the LoRa-E5 LoRaWAN and wiki, why not consider a compact board with the Xiao-form-factor?

It would leverage the growing eco-system of Xiao expansion boards and the Grove peripherals and would bring an interesting option for IoT.

On the software side, Seeed would port the standard Arduino and the LoRa SX126X to the new board. This would provide a modern alternative to the Moteino boards based on the SX1231h.

As an application layer on top of LoRa, I’ve already used the MQTT-SN implementation Aquila on this project IoT with Sub-1 GHz Sensor Network

• The clients run the An example of an Aquila 2.0 MQTT-SN client implementation for RFM69.
• The bridge is operated by the MQTT-SN Bridge firmware for RFM69 RF module and is plugged into an USB port of the Raspberry Pi.
• The gateway on the Raspberry Pi, is the MQTT-SN gateway for the Aquila 2.0 platform, which transfers the messages between the MQTT-SN bridge and the MQTT broker. It also acts as a port forwarder between the USB port the MQTT-SN bridge is connected to and the gateway.

Additionally, it would answer my open question Idea — IIoT LAN: sub-1 GHz radio for Xiao for my Industrial IoT Project.

@ming.wen What do you think?

[ming.wen]

Hi Reivilo, it is always nice to hear suggestions from you.
We are currently in the process of designing a LoRa-E5 Dev Board and Grove LoRa-E5, which enable you use LoRa-E5 with XIAO and the expansion board. Your valuable suggestions will definitely be taken into consideration when we design LoRa related products.
Stay tuned, and hope our new products see you soon~

[reivilo]

Good to know new boards are under development.

Have you selected an application layer for the LoRa implementation?

[reivilo]

Hello @ming.wen!

What are the news about the development of the boards based on the LoRa-E5?

Some of the does I’ve submitted so far:

• #Idea# Xiao LoRa-E5
• LoRa-E5 add-on for Raspberry Pi Pico
• Idea — IIoT LAN: sub-1 GHz radio for Xiao

[ming.wen]

Hi Reivilo, thanks for your inputs.
Good news to share is that LoRa-E5 series products are on their way. Hopefully to meet you on the mid of March after the Chinese New Year celebration month~
Since Arduino is not supported by LoRa-E5, rather than develop a XIAO form factor LoRa-E5, we have LoRa-E5 mini on the way.
Just a sneak peek:

[reivilo]

Very interesting news indeed! I like the Grove LoRa, perfect for bringing radio to any project.

What do you mean by “Arduino is not supported by LoRa-E5”? Since the MCU is a Cortex-M4, porting Arduino should be doable. The real challenge would be the library for LoRa, albeit encapsulating a C library into a C++ class is the standard procedure.

As always, should you need beta-testers, I’m ready to try! Happy New Chinese Year!