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Badgerboard: open-source hardware LoRa® development board on Kickstarter

By on November 30, 2016
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https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/badgerboard/badgerboard-your-ticket-to-the-lora-world?ref=profile_backed

Nordic Automation Systems released Badgerboard, an Arduino compatible LoRaWAN™ development kit, that can be easily extended to a prototype or even a small batch product. With a battery charger and an antenna connector on board.

Building prototypes on Badgerboard – that is exactly what we have been doing for the last 6 months.

Is it open-source hardware?

Yes, it is. Why? Because we love LoRaWAN™ and we want to share it with everyone!

Why LoRa®?

There are many more protocols/radios like Bluetooth Low Energy, ANT+, different IEEE 802.15.4 based protocols like 6LoWPAN and ZigBee. All of these are familiar to us, because we are already including some of these technologies in our existing projects (www.nasys.no). So we are not introducing LoRaWAN™ (The protocol running on top of the LoRa® radio) just to be the cool kids on the block. We have serious test data and development history to back it up.

Depending on the conditions of the surrounding environment the radio waves can reach from 1km to 3km in the urban area and up to 10+ km in the rural. This can be done while powering your device on a small battery like the one you have in your watch.

This is just the tip of the iceberg though. The best property of using a device like a Badgerboard is the LoRaWAN™. This is the LoRa Alliance™ standardized protocol that is specifically designed to be run on the LoRa® radios. This includes security mechanisms (cryptography) straight out of the box. Data transportation and radio parameters are all handled by the LoRaWAN™ software. This means that it is compatible with the other devices/gateways/networks. Thus you do not have to design any software in order to make your data move. You can concentrate on your application.

The communication is powered by widely used Microchip LoRaWAN module. Two flavours of the module.  RN2483-I/RM101 for the 433/868 frequency bands and RN2903-I/RM095 for the 915 MHz band and its sub-bands. The LoRaWAN stack is already part of the module and all needed libraries for LoRa functionality are included.

More info directly at the kickstarter project official page.

 

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About Luca Ruggeri

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