LoRa Module VS nRF24 VS Generic RF Module || Range & Power Test

[@MrLareneon]

The fact that the LoRa worked so well with a mismatched antenna is impressive

[@poyrikkanal]

I was thinking the same! Its very impressive he got that far with a wrong coil antenna, I used a bought antenna that was specially advertised for this Lora and it gets 3km!

Even though I see the pros of the LoRa, I still think that correctly used you can get much longer ranges of the other two chips as well. Personally I’ve built a lot with the generic really cheap ones. But I’ve been using 12v to power them. That along with an antenna on both sender and receiver really boosts the range. Thanks for the Great video! ;)

[@himstien]

700k+ subscribers with those soldering skills? great job!!

[@ShanmukhGudivadaGamingGeek44]

You trolling him? or appraising ?

[@Magic-Smoke]

I’m sorry but when dealing with RF, the antenna is (almost) everything. This video does not meet your normally high technical standards and really needs a little more preparation. That said, it’s the only time I’ve thought this - your work is usually extremely precise and of high quality.

[@ft6637]

Please consider the different input voltage, when comparing the power consumption. NRF24 uses 3.3V, while generic RF uses 5V. P=U*I

[@Oinikis]

nRF24L01 module also comes in a more powerfull version with more serious antenna, it has hundreds of meters of range, personally I tested it at 400m with solid signal. I use it in my arduino powered RC plane with no problems, flying at heights of 50+ meters.

[@agussp6731]

Hello! Do you mean the NRF24L01 + PA? I also want to make an RC plane and I did not know if this module works for me

[@AkashBagFEce]

You are right, without antenna module works 20-30m very pretty, and with antena module I got more then 450m clear renge

[@S9gd4]

the amount you highlight gives me anxiety

[@nicolasfranco9749]

Same lmao. Wtf

[@manibharathy1994]

Yes. Seeing the paper getting wet and coming off in rolls as he go back and forth

[@NoahSpurrier]

I'm glad I'm not the only one to wonder, "why is he so angry at that paper?"

[@signalworks]

yeah that's been bothering me a lot... why cant he just do one pass? seeing the ink get smeared across the words and staining the tip of the highlighter is awful

[@shakirabdo638]

Same

[@GreatKnown]

Especially when using LoRa, the antenna for both sender and receiver is particularly important. In this video, the 433 Mhz antenna is used, while in Germany (and the Netherlands) an 868 Mhz antenna and module is required. Using almost the same setup as in this video, I reached more than 2 KM receiving reliable data, above 2 KM still received data, only distorted.

[@jimb032]

Great job on this video! A few points: 1. That LoRa module is very sensative to the antenna - you need the proper one and from what I see in the video, the repurposed one from the 433mhz certainly will not do! You probably would have been better off with just a wire cut to the proper length with the antenna length calculator. 2. That little cheap transmitter only is really not a fair comparison since there is no error checking and it's one way - but to your point it's a good distance test. 3. On the 2.4 ghz model, check out iforce2d channel, he got it to go for many km's! Also Andreas Speiss has done alot with LoRa where he set the world record with distance. ...if you have an interest. Great job as always!!!

[@PhilXavierSierraJones]

Me: "Wow, this guy produces lots of interesting videos!" Also me: "Somebody get this guy lots of header pins and jumper wires, please..."

[@AtomkeySinclair]

Antenna orientation and elevation is very important in accurate distance testing. If you have one slightly tilted (not parallel) with the other, it will decrease reception dramatically. It is also a consideration that your laptop may be emitting a good deal of RF. I know from experience with HAM radios that if my handheld radio is withing 3 feet of my laptop, I will have static when hitting the local repeater. Moving away instantly corrects the issue. Given, the frequencies in question are in completely different bands, but antenna theory seems to be applicable in both situations me thinks. I urge you to elevate the transmitter to the same height you are walking, and away from your laptop - and to keep both antennas completely vertical throughout your pace. But as ALWAYS - thank YOU for the excellent work you share here. It is always informative.

[@nobodynoone2500]

Even polarization of antennas makes a huge difference at times. Try rotating something 90 degrees and watch the strength and overall snr change.

[@iscuit]

​@@nobodynoone2500 I have a question, I have two generic RF modules with 17.3cm copper antennas, is connection best at longer ranges when both antennas are vertical or when both are horizontal? If I understood correct they should be at the same angle, but which orientation

[@msr15334]

I discovered this when starting with BLE. I have to disable bluetooth on notebook to get communication working. 😅

[@AtomkeySinclair]

@iscuit verticle relative to ground, I would say.

[@Koshzor]

Dude. You have no idea how helpful your video is. Thank you so much for this test.

[@shreeshanakshathri3533]

nRF24L01 also has a long range one with a antenna, its supposed to have a range of a 1 km.

[@42222]

True that. I've been using a pair to fly my quadcopter. It works really well.

[@hopkinskong]

+Praveen Elumalai Not True. It could exceed > 300m. It depends on the On Air Data Rate (which increases Rx sensitivity when lower data rate), whether the board has external PA chip, the packet configuration (e.g. ACK/RETR), etc.

[@praveenelumalai7624]

Chun Ho Kong may be but not as much as 1km.

[@anonrider8870]

it is lie, i got sometimes 1,5km and sometimes 350 m

[@hopkinskong]

2KM for me, with on board PA enabled. Either you got a bad module or your configuration is incorrect. I have seen boards with PA on board, the CE (Chip Enable) pin of PA is tied to the SPI CS, so you need some special treatment on the software. Using 250Kbps as suggested by +ICT above and max Tx power will also in result a better performance.

[@jumbo6498]

I feel the paper ripping from here when you highlight the same line 10+ times

[@GOWTHAMKRISHGowthamShanmugaraj]

I think the transmitter current should be measured with oscilloscope or high bandwidth keithley digital multimeters, because the transmissions happen in very short bursts that the handheld multimeter cannot pickup.However it picks up receiver current because the receiver is always active.

[@zaprodk]

Agree

[@HackModern]

same thing that I thought

[@emiliomota2459]

True

[@DIYTAO]

With RF the antenna matching, type and direction are essential to know. ... For more genereic results you'd should have tested each system with multiple rotations, since sometimes longer reach comes with higher gain antenna and limited radiation pattern. Thus the distance varies wildly depending of the antennas and alignment used.

[@hopkinskong]

Those 433M Modules doesn't provide error correction/check features, just simple ASK modulation. You need to implement a protocol for it. nRF/LoRa does provide these features.

[@northshorepx]

I did like this comparison (and the marching :-). Lots of time spent on the comparison and less time on the individual setups. So it seems that LORA technology is the way to go for > 10-20 metres? Andreas Speiss has just done a video on antennae tuning so I'm thinking that perhaps you might be able to improve your ranges using better antennae? Either way thank for you another education and entertaining video. Keep up the good work.

[@greatscottlab]

Thanks for the feedback :-)

[@zolatanaffa87]

when we talk about radio waves: the antenna is everything: an old saying between radio amateurs is: a dollar for the transmitter and a thousand dollars for the Antenna! I met someone who connected Italy to the USA with a home made CW (continuos Wave) transmitter of just three low power transistors (one was only for the switching (keying) circuit) and a long wire antenna

[@ThomasTheFapEngine]

There's a project currently going on in Tasmania involving custom L.o.R.a configurations w/ antennas (about 30cm long), we're getting transfer distances of up to 12km, and more is do-able

[@aaronchamberlain4698]

I bought antennas with my modules from Sparkfun and was able to get about 2km with just the default configuration. So yes, it's much more Long Range than the others. It does have a low data transfer speed though.

[@foxfyre3600]

I've gotten a couple hundred metres out of the generic 433MHz modules using just a wire as the antenna with a length of 173mm. Pick those over the 315Mhz modules. I just used serial lines, a sensible speed is about 1200 baud. The receiver has AGC so it's always picking up garbage. It's probably worth a few more dollars to get modules that do the signal validation themselves, depending on how you value your time but limitation breeds creativity. The serial input data (in the receiver) never stops, it needs some serious filtering in software. Before sending anything I send a preamble to get the receiver and serial line synched up, then I compute a checksum, send a header, data, packet id(just a counter), checksum. I send the same thing about 5 times for redundancy. When the receiver gets the header, the packet data is recorded and the expected checksum is computed. If it matches the one from the transmitter, nothing messed up and so it gets further processing. The packet id is also saved so if other copies receive ok they can be ignored. I've only seen it screw up twice in years but that was the first version and those packets were only 3 bytes long

[@LordDecapo]

Your one of my favorite youtubers. Love the information and your style of presentation. Great job dude!

[@bsgmz]

Hi GreatScott, I am using nrf24l01 module(nrf24l01p library) on some project and if you use 22uF ceramic capacitor between Vcc-ground and some long antenna you can achive least ten time more range. I have tested it with 50 m and it is working without problem. I will test it with long range too. You can try. Good video again...

[@danekmartin45]

Very nice video, I really enjoyed watching it (as I do all of your videos). I do, however, have two notes which are worth mentioning: A. when you were comparing the bandwidth of 433 MHz and LoRa radios, you said that the 433 MHz module has 4 kb/s rate... but the datasheet says 4 KB/s, which is 32 kb/s, and that is almost the same as LoRa (32 ≈ 37,5 kb/s)... So they both have similar bandwidths B. with these 433 MHz, you must provide a clean power source, e. g. a battery or a linear regulator. Powerbank's output is full of noise. Also, you can power the transmitter from higher voltages, so for example I am using a 9V battery and I am able to get almost 100 m out of it outdoors, with a 17 cm piece of wire as an antenna But otherwise, keep up the good work!

[@ianojannasch61]

Was about to comment the same about the 4KB/s meaning kiloBytes which is 32 Kilobits/Second. You beat me to it.

[@praveenelumalai7624]

Shit I posted the same without seeing this....

[@AttitudeGames]

Same here.

[@KingJellyfishII]

Oops! just posted a comment about this...

[@CrazyStranger11]

Would you like to explain what you're doing differently?

[@raybright5805]

Another excellent FB from you, I especially like your clearly spoken English backed up with your onscreen hand written notes & that highlighter pen. Now back on topic, YES the external antenna is going to effect transmissions especially at these high frequencies - maybe you could look closely at that issue. Keep up the excellent work....

[@3amali1]

Why am not even subscribed to your channel yet, though I always watch your content?!! You certainly deserve a subscription.

[@Hofsan]

I wanted to thank you for telling us about JLCPCB. I went to their website and in no time designed 2 different PCB's. It took very little learning. I am about to order my boards and wanted to let you know how much I appreciate the link.

[@Greali]

Thank you so much for this video I always wanted to watch a comparison of this kind of transmitters made by you, so thank you again!!

[@hopkinskong]

What is your data rate setting for nrF24L01(+)? The lower the data rate, the longer the range (due to Rx sensitivity). Also check modules with PA integrated on the board, those can get 2KM+ easily.

[@semihk09]

How can I find out with which antennas this module can transfer data at a range of 1-2 km? Can you help me with the keywords I need to find the range I need in the outdoor LOS field using the Friis Transmission Equation? Everyone has stated that it provides 2 km + data transfer, but there is no clear information about RF setups.

[@narendravishwakarma6956]

Enjoyed the video.... Packed with crunchy knowledge for beginners and moderates too..... Loved this one.... Thanks buddy

[@EverythingEbikeChannel]

It pretty much depends whether you want low power(generic), fast transfer rate(nRF24) or long range(LoRa). Of course there are more complex differences.

[@mohittalreja4022]

Because of you I have now more interest in electronics

[@kevinchan4823]

A video which I've been waiting for a long time 😄

[@matthiasfischer3434]

Moin Moin Du hörst dich ganz schön erkältet an. Ich wünsche dir eine gute Besserung. Aber deine Videos und Themen sind wie immer TOP.

[@mouizimran1032]

Thanks Scott, great work. My best wishes for you. Really commendable work.

[@Dinkleberg96]

As always, an AWESOME video! Thank you!

[@mecommenting]

You are Great Scott ... thank you very much for your videos

[@jasonmhite]

Why did you use the 433 mhz antenna with the 868 mhz LoRa module? It should be a different length for 868 mhz, you should be able to easily get 1 km or more in an open area with those modules and a wire antenna of proper length.

[@racketman2u]

surely if 868mhz is twice 433mhz the antenna would be a harmonic of the wavelength, though?

[@jnevercast]

@@racketman2u Something, something, impedance.

[@DavidLopez-bz4rj]

Cut the antenna in half, but helical is bad antenna for this

[@FullTwistYT]

Should do a vid on the esp8266 boards also. they dont necessarily need a wireless router to connect and talk. one can be in AP mode and others can connect and talk to that one. It is another form of communication that should be considered.

[@sirpatrickrattschlegel2828]

Soldering skills are expandable ... everything else is "Great Scott"

[@williamwang9892]

I've tried adding an X2401C chip as an amplifier for nRF24L01, and it turnd out that the range can rise much higher. Actually this type of combination is very popular now, but I just felt like designing one myself so I can integrate the circuit with other modules in a single board later :-)

[@ekbastu]

You are great, Scott

[@awesomefacepalm]

Andreas Speiss have the range record for LoRa, ground to ground with 212 km. The longest range tough was 702 km from a weather baloon to ground

[@oestrek]

perhaps you would have even better results with your lora devices if you had better antennas for them. The "Swiss youtube guy" has certainly achieved some amazing results.

[@তাসফিকুলতপু]

Great Scott teach us about power in a electronic basics video.

[@maheshmadawala1851]

Greate video verry clear voice easy to lean poor english like us

[@simon_fox_youtube]

Great video as always. Can you do a video on making a switch mode constant-current power supply? That would be great!

[@moritzahrens6314]

Nice! This is what I needed just now!

[@sunny90908]

Wow still working on motorised long board , I remember it was the first video on this channel!!!

[@alexander_adnan]

congrat man.. I am super impressed

[@robert574]

There are some comments that the video failed to do this or failed to do that, but I think it was perfect. Why? Because it caught the interest of everyone to join in and comment with their ideas and knowledge. Remember the designer want's to learn also and not always just be the teacher. This is one of the few videos where the comments are all worth reading.

[@tasror]

Dude, you are killing it. One of my favourite geek channels. Thanks for sharing!

[@javicarmonagalvez]

7:29 you said 4 kilobits per second, but it is written like 4KB/s not as 4Kbps so it's kilobytes and 1kiloyte equals 8 kilobits so the first one can handle 32 Kbps(4KB/s times 8bits in a byte)

[@chetandhongade3561]

Greatscott you make good video....all the best bro....

[@laurentthiol]

Thank you, I love it Your videos are great !!!

[@castortoutnu]

Great as always, thanks!

[@PierAisa]

Great video. To perform such kind of test you need to investigate also the antenna type, orientation and connection. I'm suspecting you are loosing a lot of power on these blocks. Pay also attention not to transmit something without antenna, you can damage the transmitter because you are working with very bad SWR ! Look at Andreas Speiss video about Lora enad antenna matching. In any case thanks for this video.

[@weerobot]

Awesome video...Watching on a MSI too...

[@John_Ridley]

One EXTREMELY important thing that you did not mention here. That is duty cycle. LoRa is limited by law to transmitting at most 1% of the time. If you have a problem where you need to be transmitting more than that, you must eliminate LoRa from consideration at the start. The nice thing about LRF24 is that it's highly resistant to noise. I've built real time remote control stage props using it, and I can easily get a couple dozen channels in and control it from the back of a theater and have good confidence in it working on queue. LoRa would not be usable there because I need to transmit constantly.

[@JuulCPH]

When you talk about laws you need to specify the country and frequency. No laws apply to LoRa specifically and LoRa can operate on several different frequencies. I _think_ you're talking about 915 MHz in the U.S. is that correct?

[@tjeulink]

isn't that only for the subbands?

[@squalltk1]

No i think he speaks about ISM in Europe.... so he is totaly correct. 36s transmition time per day ! sooooooo not a good choice for this project....

[@bentizzano1187]

JuulCPH LoRa in the US 915MHz band is allowed a 40% duty cycle. Much better than Europe.

[@doctorweile]

I agree - I digged into LoRa a month ago... but I have some questions, I haven't been able to get a proper answer to, if I may... If I set up a service with some nodes, transmitting to a LoRaWan, what will stop "bad guys" from jamming the entire network by transmitting constantly? Do I have to rely on the authorities to shut it down? Also, 8 channels using 1% bandwith = 800 nodes in theory. What happens when there's no more bandwidth - or if two nodes transmit simultaneously? Will the system give the strongest signal priority?

[@iaroslavz2644]

Thank you very much for your grate Video. It was very informative.

[@FrancescoLena]

You should set the LoRa TX power to an higher value. This module works up to 20DBm. I've gotten more than 100km with the same module.

[@Giblet535]

It's all about the antenna. Any of those with a matched antenna at both rx and tx ends will outperform everything you tried here. LoRa will still win the distance competition.

[@BrunoVera]

thanks for the comparison :D

[@ibiscar06]

I enjoy all your vids. I'd like to see a project, or projects, that can be made using old tablet screens or if it has any useful internals. I know you've done some before using screens of eBay, but for us that have old tableta I think it'd be great. Thanks for all the info you give us in your videos

[@mohammedabrarahmed3299]

I did find it interesting. Cool ideas. Thanks for your great videos. Are you a professor in a University?

[@John_Ridley]

I think if you're only getting that range out of LoRa you must have extremely poorly matched antennas. You should be getting hundreds of meters easily.

[@electron-1979]

A km easy!

[@JuulCPH]

and I think he forgot to set the spreading factor, but even with the default it should be much more than this.

[@PedroMSOliveira]

John Ridley with the same devs i was able to get 18.9km, something is odd there (rmf95w > lora gw)

[@cripplingdepression8889]

Well he was holding the antenna in front of him while moving away from the transmitter behind him so, his body did not help

[@jnevercast]

In our tests at the IoT company I work for, we got 500m range the middle of the suburbs, surrounded by houses and concrete buildings. LoRa is excellent.

[@zaferaltun]

Thanks for this great video

[@wassfila]

Great video! As Andreas mentionned LoRa has more potential. I'd also give 2.4 GHz more chances with nrf24+pa+lna and use nRF51 and nRF52 which have +4db in stead of 0db of nrf24.

[@sander4436]

Souds like you caught a cold, be well soon.

[@plokkum]

Sander Dol i think he’s German

[@nonefficient]

I really loved the video.

[@sagardevachar6955]

Hey Scott..! I love your videos. But why don't you ever use a Breadboard..?

[@nomanmajid2507]

Hey you should make a arduino chatting system using some LoRa modules, 2 TFT lcd, 2 Arduinos, and 2 microphones

[@go1og2le3su4xxx]

Hello GreatScott, Thank you for the great video ! I was wondering if you took into consideration the antenna length to wavelength ration when you did your tests ? It seems that an antenna with the wrong size, compared to the emitted wavelength can actually impair the signal

[@krisztiandancs3475]

We're using Lo-Ra module too for our CanSat project :).

[@yuxin7440]

Generally speaking, the higher the frequency, the higher the data transfer rate, and the higher the power consumption for the same distance (or the shorter the distance for the same power consumption), that would explain all the testing result. So there that is the trade-off. I have played with nRF24+ for a while and got a similar testing result for the maximum distance. But I need to mention there are variations to nRF24+ with an amplifier or better an antenna that is designed to handle longer distances (the seller claims it will work for ~900 meters in clean space, but I never test it). Of course, an additional amplifier would consume more energy.

[@avejst]

Thanks for sharing 😀👍

[@X2Danny]

Hi Scott Why not try out HC-12? We used it for a spehere robot and as we calculated we can archieve about 1,5 Km range

[@gelatinocyte6270]

That German march though...

[@He4vyD]

Gelatinocyte Rubber feet, amirite?

[@fifaham]

Nice experimentation. At time frame @5:34 have you had chance to test for range in different area? Were there any cellular or power transmitters near you? If yes then there maybe an interfering signals affecting the range test. Just food for the thought. Believe it or not, even the nearby microwave oven or other equipment may reduce the range because then the signal will be received by the receiver and thought of as noise. Filtering and power increase may increase the range, to overcome noise, if any.

[@markconger8049]

Great tests and explanations. In the future I would like to see a distance test with the transmitter antenna mounted on a pole or higher structure. Even the roof of a car. My guess is that LoRa will show a remarkable distance improvement.

[@ProDesigneHd]

You sound sick, hope you get better

[@juliadiyeasydiycrafts-howt7672]

You are awesome !

[@lux_expat]

I used to do nRF's until I discovered Si4432 modules. They are much powerful and customizable. A little messy to calibrate but there is an Arduino library you can use which makes it a breeze.

[@WildfoxFabrication]

this was awesome!!!

[@迈贞观]

good demonstration!

[@anycatdessai]

Looks like this is going to be the go to module for your quad-copter project. Can we extend the existing antenna (They call it something like the Meandered inverted F antenna ) on the nRF24 for a better range? Make an electronics basics video on antennas.

[@OthmanAlikhan]

Thanks for the video =)

[@robjal]

I ported the Arduinio Virtual Wire library from C to JAL and used on a PIC microcontroller together with the 433 MHz transmitter and receiver module but the range is higher than mentioned in your video. If you look at the documentation of the Virtual Wire Library it should be able to reach 100 Meters depending on the chosen bitrate.

[@asdf825]

Please do more videos on LoRa

[@coreyh55]

Every time you make I video like this I end up buying stuff..... :( forever poor ): keep up the great work! :D

[@kubajz2257]

There are also hihg power NRFs with claimed range of 1100 meters in open field. The transmission range depends on power amplification set in the program too. 5 meters seems like you set it to minimum.

[@electrokidzz2183]

Hello Great Scott, do you think you could do a video on reactance and impedance?

[@hopejohn]

could you make a diy induction heater ? i love your videos.

[@matiasl.ceballos3346]

This video came just in time for me. We are doing a project for college with a partner where we need to send some data from a sensor and we were wondering wich module would fit the best, considering power consumption and range. Thanks!

[@rammah99]

Hell yeah I love you so much thanks

[@Evgen-Evgen-Evgen]

Great video. What about stand by mode? Is LoRa have less power consumption?

[@zukjeff]

Good vid. Current consumption and range needs to be tested with a correctly tuned antenna.

[@niccoloboano8638]

Can you try also HC 12 modules? They are transreceivers which costs around 7 euros on amazon (in Italy). Per datasheet, they can transmit in a range of about 1,8 kilometers.

[@nnsolanki]

Hi Scott, Please do a video with software implementation of FEC or Turbo codes, and how it effects the transmission distance.

[@kyoudaiken]

Nice informative video. Are there also 2.4 GHz based modules? PS: Somehow I don't like it how aggressively you use the text marker. x'D Why not using screen recording and marking the parts in the PDFs instead of printing everything out?

[@derrogers]

nrf24l is quite cable, search for videos from iforce2d. right modules paired with good antennas can give you plenty of range.

[@thijmenhartmann9397]

hello greatscot, love your content. I have a question, when is the new version of the elektric longboard comming? i have built my own obout a year and a half ago and want to make it better, since it can use some upgrdes. keep up your great work!

[@firenado4295]

could you make an fpv or wireless camera setup with the lora as it could be interesting if it can be done and would make a good diy or buy episode.