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Comment by 1001101 | Hacker News Reader

I would think that LoRa, with similar footprint and bandwidth, would be a better adder for hobby boards, as you could own both ends of the system and not have to interface with a third-party (SigFox), 2-years subscription included not withstanding.

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LoRa is in the pipeline but it requires you to either setup your own gateways or join somebody else's network ($$). SigFox is setting up networks globally and this board also comes with geolocation included in the subscription. So if you want to make a low power sensor node that works now this is s good product

Massimo this is great. LoRa client support and maybe also an Arduino LoRa Gateway it will be amazing for rolling out nodes in agriculture. These areas are often not served by existing networks so a DIY-solution will always have its spot.

There is a Shield + Gateway coming out soon , the Lora Alliance will use it as a dev kit. In the summer we'll have a MKR format board. SigFox is good becaue it can deliver now on a lot of use cases

Massimo, at what price range an capabilities are you aiming your gateway, since it's currently quite expensive - 200euro + for a multi channel model.

A couple years ago, for a RHoK event, we imagined a network of seismic/motion sensors using cellphone brains on top of poles that could be dropped from planes and penetrate enough in the soil to remain steady and signal land movements before landslides.

This could be a really cool way of deploying (or dropping) a network with a mesh backbone.

The Things Network is currently building an open, federated LoRa network: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/

They already have complete coverage of many cities and everyone can contribute.

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