Grove - LoRa Radio

Introduction

3.3V 5.0V UART

Grove is a very powerful platform developed by Seeed Studio to simplify your IoT projects.We have integrated the grove connector to most boards produced by Seeed to make them become a system. This time, we combined Grove with LoRa to provide an ultra-long-range wireless module for you.

The main functional module in Grove - LoRa Radio 433MHz is RFM98, which is a transceiver features the LoRa long range modem that provides ultra-long range spread spectrum communication and high interference immunity whilst mini-missing current consumption. The heart of Grove - LoRa Radio 433MHz is ATmega168, a widely used chip with very high-performance and low power consumption, especially suitable for this grove module.

There we already integrated a simple wire antenna to receive signal, if the signal is too weak to receive, don’t worry, the MHF connector next to the antenna is for adding a second antenna which has MHF interface to gain more signal.

This is the 433MHz version, which can be used for 433MHz communication. You can also find the version for 868MHz at Grove - LoRa Radio 868MHz.

Version Released Date How to Buy
Grove - LoRa Radio 433 MHz Dec 10, 2016
Grove - LoRa Radio 868 MHz Dec 10, 2016

Features

  • Using RFM95 module based on SX1276 LoRa®
  • Working Voltage:5V/3.3V
  • ~28mA(Avg) @+20dBm continuous transmit
  • ~8.4mA(Avg)@standby mode
  • ~20mA(Avg) @receive mode, BW-500kHz
  • Working Temperature:-20 – 70℃
  • Interface:Grove - UART(RX,TX,VCC,GND)
  • Simple wire antenna or MHF Connector for external high gain antenna
  • Working Frequency:868MHz/433MHz
  • +20dBm 100 mW Power Output Capability
  • Size:20*40mm
  • Rate:0.3kps~50kps
  • Ready-to-go Arduino libraries
  • Resered MHF antenna connector

Tip

More details about Grove modules please refer to Grove System

Platforms Supported

Hardware Overview

  1. ATMega168 MCU (datasheet)
  2. MHF Connector
  3. Wire Antenna
  4. RFM95 Module (datesheet)
  5. Grove Interface
PIN NAME FUNCTION
1 TX TX of UART
2 RX RX of UART
3 VCC Power supply, 3.3V or 5V
4 GND Connect Ground

Application Ideas

  • Internet of Things
  • Smart Home
  • Sensor Hub
  • Long distance wireless communication

Getting Started

After this section, you can make Grove - LoRa Radio run with only few steps.

Preparations

Now we are making a demo for P2P(point to point) communication with the Grove - Lora Radio 433MHz, the Grove - LoRa Radio 868MHz is the same way to use.

Tip

Grove - LoRa Radio 433MHz can’t talk to Grove - LoRa Radio 868MHz.

Item Qty Link
Seeeduino Lotus 2 GET ONE NOW!
Grove - LoRa Radio 433MHz 2 GET ONE NOW!
Micro USB Cable 2 GET ONE NOW!

If this is your first time using Seeeduino Lotus, please refer to Seeeduino Lotus’s wiki.

Seeeduino Lotus is fully compatible with Arduino which works as simple as Arduino.

If this is your first time using Arduino, Please put hand on here to start your Arduino journey.

Connecting hardware

Seeeduino Lotus is a combination of Seeeduino and Base Shield. We can connect the LoRa Radio module to the D5 socket directly as the below picture shows.

enter image description here

Download Library

Click to download the library and install it (How to install an Arduino Library)

Open the example

Open your Arduino IDE, click File > Examples>Grove_LoRa_433MHz_and_915MHz_RF-master you will get many examples for the module.

Node Example Name Function
Sender rf95_client Send “Hello World” every 1s
Receiver rf95_server Receive data and print it

Click Tools>Board to choose “Seeeduino Lotus” and select respective serial port then click on Upload button to finish the steps.

Tip

If you’re using Grove - LoRa Radio 868MHz module change the following code.

//rf95.setFrequency(434.0);
rf95.setFrequency(868.0);

Review Results

After upload completed, you can open the serial monitor to see the result.

enter image description here

Data Rate

The below chart shows the relationships between the band rate signal band width spreding factor and sensitivity.

enter image description here

Resources


ArduinoWioBeagleBoneRaspberry PiLinkIt ONE

Caution

The platforms mentioned above as supported is/are an indication of the module's hardware or theoritical compatibility. We only provide software library or code examples for Arduino platform in most cases. It is not possible to provide software library / demo code for all possible MCU platforms. Hence, users have to write their own software library.

Help us make it better

Welcome to the new documentation system of Seeed Studio. We have made a lot of progress comparing to the old wiki system and will continue to improve it to make it more user friendly and helpful. The improvement can't be done without your kindly feedback. If you have any suggestions or findings, you are most welcome to submit the amended version as our contributor via Github or give us suggestions in the survey below, it would be more appreciated if you could leave your email so that we can reply to you. Happy Hacking!