LoRa32u4 II

This is a really good quality LoRa Board, it is actually BSFrance. It basically allows you to remotely control your Arduino Board for multiple applications. The board does not consume high energy (About 10 mA), and in addition to the on board charging circuit, this will allow me to install it in a remote place powered by a solar panel, and a small 3.7v LiPo battery. This way the battery will be charging when there is sun thanks to the on board circuit, and will use the battery when it is not. Now for the range, in theory and in open spaces the 915MHz should reach up to 10 Miles, but I doubt it with this small antenna, my personal opinion would be around 1 mile on stock antenna and no obstacles. But since this antenna is detachable, you can change it to a higher gain antenna if you want to use it for long distances. I am planning use it a remote circuit soon, and will update this review with the performance results.

I have two Adafruit boards and two DIYMall boards. The DIYMall boards communicate with the Feather boards OK, but not with each other. See the screen shot below. The results of testing are: Adafruit TX, Adafruit Rx : GOOD Adafruit TX, DIYMall Rx : GOOD Adafruit RX, DIYMall Tx : GOOD1 DIYMall TX, DiYmall RX: No communications. Others have posted problems where DIYMall loose communicate with each other, but no one has offered a solution. If some one can offer a solution to the problem, I will be glad to revise my review. More info: Problem appears to be transmitted power. Adafruit to Adafruit shows RSSI -35, Adafruit - DIYMall shows -91. It appears that Adafruit can detect that level, DIYMall cannot.

Despite antennas shown in the photo and being mentioned in the write-up, the two boards I ordered showed up without the antennas. More to follow.

All I can say is sweeeeeet! I'm a newbie in the land of Arduino-ish devices. I have tried a few different LoRa devices and this is the best one I have found. The libraries were easy to use and understand. I made a texting application that runs through the serial monitor between my laptop and my desktop using the Arduino IDE and had no problems setting them up. I did try the documentation provided in the description and for whatever reason had a couple issues but nothing I couldn't overcome in a few google searches. Just search google "Adafruit Featherwing 32u4 Lora Tutorial" and its easy to go from there. I get about a mile and a half out of them before they start to putter out. That's pretty good considering it is through the trees and not line of sight.

Overall solid build quality and packaging. Everything worked right away, and was compatible with the native Adafruit libraries for the Adafruit Feather 32u4. A couple observations and tricks to make your experience smooth: 1) these are a little wider than the normal Adafruit feather boards (see picture, this board is on the left and a normal feather is on the right), so if you want them to work with your featherwings you'll be disappointed. I took off 1 star for this. 2) Make sure you install the Adafruit boards library (google it for instructions) 3) the best part by far is that it did just work. I was up and running with the LoRa libraries in no time, make sure you use sandeepmistry's LoRa library on github for the best results. 4) Build quality was solid, everything looks really nice. 5) I'd buy again, though it would be nice if they were standard width. Overall good deal! Get you some LoRa!

A little trouble getting the libraries all setup but other than that they have worked flawlessly. Lots of fun to work with.

Resources for this model, seeming to be a clone of Adafruit Feather LoRa 32U4, are few and may be inaccurate. There seem to be slight changes in it the device, and there is no schematic. Information on line is contradictory and the information on the Amazon webpage does not appear to work, that is, setting PB0 high or low has no effect on monitoring battery voltage. There does not seem to be any contact information on DIY Mall.