"Transaction Proof" Mailbox Notifier using an unknown E32 LoRa board and an ATTINY1614

LoRa modulation is used in many applications, like LoRaWAN or Meshtastic. Another application, a LoRa 1:1 link, can be beneficial because it inherits all the good properties, like long distance and low power. It is simple, does not need an infrastructure, and can be used bi-directionally. Because I want to build a long-range bidirectional mailbox notifier, I will evaluate a few LoRa boards, connect them to an ESP32 and an ATTINY1614, and finally integrate them via MQTT into Home Assistant.
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[@JCWren]

I've always used LoRaWAN confirmed messages for data that has to be reliably delivered. The two LoRaWAN stacks I've used both have callbacks for packets that are not confirmed by the gateway, which just re-queues the message and tries until it hits a timeout or retry counter value. I built mine using an STM32WLE5JC and a CR123A lithium battery. Prototyped the design using a Seeed Studio Wio-E5 mini Dev Board before committing to a PCB. I looked at a handful of ways for sensing the door opening and settled on a reed switch. Lower power than LIDAR, accelerometer, and other methods I looked at.

[@richard_wenner]

Saw this and immediately thought that I would send you an operational jammer through the post.

[@ralfbauerfeind8236]

Well, should you get your hands on a none-refillable vape... Those usually have tiny lithium cells. With a cheap charging electronic you can run this for quite some time, and if you don't vape yourself but get it for free from someone else you only have the cost for the charging electronics - and even this you can use for other such cells... 😊

[@stevebabiak6997]

You probably watch Big Clive

[@yannkitson116]

@@stevebabiak6997 We all do :)

[@ralfbauerfeind8236]

@@stevebabiak6997 Good guess, and yes. I also watch others that make similar content in my mother's tongue. ☺️ But I started tinkering way before KZbin started. 😏

[@A3Kr0n]

I get my mail every couple of weeks at the end of my driveway. Then I throw it all away in my trashcan.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Also a good idea! No notifier needed ;-)

[@Scaliad]

Packages (mostly from China) are tracked and I am notified, and the rest is trash... No sensor required... My mailbox is also a mile as the crow flys and two for me... But, I do need a driveway sensor with some real range...

[@damianbutterworth2434]

@@Scaliad I used a GSM800 shield to send TXT messages when a sensor was activated.

[@Scaliad]

@@damianbutterworth2434 There is so much I don't know...

[@damianbutterworth2434]

@@Scaliad same here.

[@paulbryson9921]

Can you tell me, does the signal really penetrate the Faraday cage (mailbox) or does it complete the transmission while the door is open?

[@electronics.unmessed]

It does, because the slits are bigger than half a wave length.

[@AndreasSpiess]

I do not know for sure, but the opening looks into the opposite direction of the receiver and is quite small.

[@dennyfox3139]

Check out the Reyax RYLR998 transceiver. It operates with simple AT style commands. No libraries necessary. All LoRa parameters are available. Works with anything that can do serial, baud rate is adjustable, default is 115200. I've been using it quite successfully.

[@AndreasSpiess]

I saw them, but thought they are similar to the E32. Where do you see the difference?

[@dennyfox3139]

@@AndreasSpiess I had not looked at the E32 since it is 433Mhz. I need 915Mhz here in the US. The RYLR998 is very small and very well documented. Very good manual on the AT commands. Bought mine from Amazon with quick delivery. The RYLR998 has AT commands to change anything you wish for LoRa parameters and/or your per to per, one to many, or many to one LoRa network addresses. Reyax has other models but I don’t see one at 433Mhz with the AT command set. I like it because you don’t have to get involved with LoRaWan or the Things network. Too much overhead for me. The board can also be fitted with a Ufl connector if you want a higher gain antenna. I have gotten around ½ mile range in a suburban setting with a pretty crude prototype using the built in antenna. It can be set to 868Mhz with the AT commands; is that legal in Europe? They are simple and get the job done!

[@KnowledgePerformance7]

Agreed. I used a pair to build a basic boat robot while at University. The documentation is a little hard to read but very powerful.

[@dfgaJK]

For such a simple task your software could have run on the EFM8 Busy Bee 8-bit Microcontroller in the E32 module... It would have been interesting to see you hack it to change it's firmware to put your own program on it.

[@NatesRandomVideo]

We used to call stateless data transmission protocols “spray and pray”. lol 😂

[@peter.stimpel]

me, jumping around between espnow and lora for my "out of wifi sight" projects at home. Found no favorite by now ...

[@AndreasSpiess]

I like ESPnow because it is simple and cheap. But for this faraday cage, lora is the only way to get a signal out...

[@supremeleader5516]

Try on Ra-02, it's a good apot

[@drstefankrank]

ESP:NOW is Wifi in its core. I use a standard Wifi Card and Wireshark to monitor what I send with ESP:NOW and if the payload is really encrypted. It is just a vendor special frame type that is usually ignored by everything else.

[@wewe365]

@@AndreasSpiessthanks. Ordered all the parts.

[@billywallace1360]

Your state machine doesn't show anything happening if there is no acknowledgement. Do you have timeouts in those states that re-transmit the filling or emptied messages?

[@AndreasSpiess]

It is handled in the "waiting for acknowledgement". I felt it did not need a separate state. But I could have written it into the box, you are right.

[@mcconkeyb]

Nice update on your mailbox notifier project. 🙂 Hopefully I'll have some down time this winter and I think I'll experiment with some of the wireless chips that you have described here. Since they come from aliexpress I guess I should order them soon, as typical delivery times to western Canada, seems to be about 3 months. :-)🙄😴😴😴👍

[@supremeleader5516]

I made my final year project of Off-grid text based communication system using Ra-02 with ESP-32 while using my android phone for sending and receiving messages using Bluetooth serial terminal, btw I am still pending to make a dedicated Kotlin app for that. I also used Sandeep Mistry's Library. 😎

[@zyghom]

if you had ESPnow to MQTT gateway you could have simply used ESP32 in the mailbox and that would be kind of 5 times simpler with the same results: reliable, low power, with confirmations. ESPnow supports long range connectivity and the full transmission including wake up and go to sleep is kind of 0.1s with about 8uA sleep current for ESP32. Less complications but of course one has to have espnow2mqtt gateway already there.

[@matterino50]

@AndreasSpiess I was wondering if you had any ideas how to test LoRa sensitivity of a receiver. I find it difficult using conventional methods, since even with maximum attenuators, the signal finds a way through leakage paths. 😅

[@SeanChYT]

I am not sure if this channel covered this, but a Chinese robotic lawn mower (Mammotion Luba) severely violated the 1% rule and users of it were contacted by the national frequency agencies in at least France, Switzerland and Denmark and were told to stop using it. The manufacturer (Mammotion) quickly rewrote the entire Lora code between the RTK base station and the robotic lawn mower into using a custom frequency hopping algorithm, and there were a lot of bugs, issues, and also a report that even the new algorithm violated the duty time rules. I am interested in how unprofessional and badly designed products on the market ruin the RF experience for everyone, how it is monitored, managed, etc..

[@AndreasSpiess]

Here, the authorities are responsible to monitor the frequencies. However, often, such violations do not harm others and are not discovered. But if discovered, these devices come on a black list and are confiscated by customs (if discovered). However, this Luba is not (yet) on our black list ;-)

[@SeanChYT]

@@AndreasSpiess In this instance it actually was discovered by neighboring businesses, as their equipment almost faced a sort of denial of service attack or jamming. The duty cycle of the Mammotion RTK base station was measured by the French ANFR as being between 30% and 95% as per reports. I guess once complaints were sent in to the authorities it wasn't too difficult for them (?) to send a car out and find the offending device. After firmware updates the individuals got a letter saying it was now ok to use the device again, however I am very skeptical of such companies that couldn't care less about the rules to begin with. Many interesting posts on it using the terma Luba, ANFR, RTK, etc.

[@ModelLights]

' using a custom frequency hopping algorithm' There is no frequency hopping that can work, the rules for it are purely time and on the band based, there isn't any language for changing freuqencies within the band resets the time.. The band is clearly designated for low duty, and was willfully misinterpreted to pretend it was OK to be doing continuous transmission in any manner. Max duty in the US was like 30 seconds, a minute, maybe two an hour, been a while since I last checked the spec. ANY manufacturer or seller in the US pretends they 'didn't know', then they are almost guaranteed lying. When they were coming up with this dumb, illegal use of the band, there were tons of people explaining how hard they were breaking the law. But ultimately the FCC are the ones to enforce it here. Don't be surprised if they eventually stop the market totally. Even worse is all the people who do know it's actually illegal, and still using it. FCC can fine their asses heavily if they can prove that the user actually knew it was breaking the rules. So not a smart idea. May vary in other countries, but most of them are even harder on people who break radio equipment laws.

[@SeanChYT]

@@ModelLights I am unable to point you to the analysis of the new algorithm, as KZbin keeps deleting my replies. So aggravating.

[@ModelLights]

@@SeanChYT ' as KZbin keeps deleting my replies.' Yes I get it all the time as well, since I spill correct answers and youtube and the corrected hate that lol.. No need, it won't be compliant anyway, there is no 'beat the system' algorithm for it. I was among the many pointing to the exact places that make it 'only low duty cycle' way back when they were first coming up with this obvious misuse of the band. It's not that impossible to read, the people doing this crap knew exactly they were breaking it, but whined 'it's not being used much'. It's not intended to 'be used much', it's supposed to be almost 100% open so the sporadic use gets through relatively easily, even for a ton of devices over large areas.

[@drmocm]

I have tried a couple of solutions for a mailbox notifier. My mailbox is about ten meters from my house in a solid steel enclosure. I tried wifi and lora, but always had either reception problems or battery problems. Now I just use an Aquara DJT11LM Zigbee vibration detector, which works best for me, unless the mail carrier is very gentle. On the other hand, we got a lot of false notification last week when they were tearing up the sidewalk to lay new fiber optic cables.

[@electronics.unmessed]

In the case of LoRa you can improve a lot using the right antennas.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Interresting! I did not know that Zigbee works out of such a box. My box is about 50m away. Using "secondary" indicators usually are less reliable. Here, 6 mailboxes are connected. So, vibration would not give me my private message, but, because I get most of the days something, it still would create a valid notification.

[@pauls8366]

I have tried alot of solutions, different wifi systems and zigbee devices, nothing worked for me, untill I tried a Philips Hue Motion Sensor, that works just fine.

[@thijsfranssen]

Nice video! Would not just using confirmed uplinks solve your problem on LoraWAN? A known stratagy is sending 2C+1N messages. Being 2 confirmed and 1 non confirmed.

[@AndreasSpiess]

I never used "confirmed" uplinks. I assume it would also include at least one downlink message. There is not a lot of information available. Did you use it and did it work?

[@johnlaurencepoole6408]

Today I learned that if I build a mailbox notifier with Lora, I may get two mail deliveries a day... in the U.S. (it's been over 60 years since the U.S. Post Office discontinued more than one delivery a day! Also, why not have an antenna made from a large spring that will pop out of the mailbox (and clear the Faraday cage) every time the mailman opens the door -- they would, of course, have to push the spring antenna back into the compartment. What fun for your mailman to have something like those joke snakes in a can for your mail box -- something to distract him from the humdrum of hundreds of mail deliveries and to look forward to every delivery. Lastly, it could very expensive to test -- having to send mail to yourself to guarantee that the mailman has reason to open your compartment door. (Silliness from an early morning fan who looks forward to each and every new presentation you share, seriously: thank you so much for what you do.)

[@AndreasSpiess]

1. We get our newspaper early in the morning unrelated with the "general mail" 2. The mailmen (not only one because they rotate) usually know me anyway because I get a lot of Chinese packets ;-) And thank you for watching all my videos!

[@DenfordBerriman]

This may be the video that makes me a finally join the loraverse. My mailbox is a little too far for the WiFi.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Go for it! I like this function.

[@DenfordBerriman]

@@AndreasSpiess I've been thinking of 18650s and solar for a letterbox monitor but those stat's for the AAs really blew all that out of the water. Such a good point!

[@deslomeslager]

@@DenfordBerriman You could maybe consider solar + LiFePO4. If you have it charged to max. 3.4 Volt it may be exactly right (I did not check the specs, just brainstorming).

[@JeanPierreLavoie]

Nice! A simpler solution with less hardware would be to use the LoRa and ESP32 using the same boards like in the LoRa32 V2.1_1.6 from LilyGo boards.

[@ethzero]

(3:09 *reQuest)

[@electronics.unmessed]

Thx for sharing!

[@AndreasSpiess]

My pleasure!

[@jdsan6009]

A good option is RAK3172. That module has the microcontroller and lora transceiver in one small footprint. It can work standalone using Arduino or by AT commands.

[@donaldhoudek2889]

Currently, I use a open/close magnetic sensor for my alarm system to monitor the mail box. Has been working flawlessly for the last 5 years and I get about 8 to 10 months out of the wafer battery. I also soldered a small lead of wire to the printed circuit antenna in the sensor and drilled a small hole in the bottom of the mail box. It is about 60' away from the house. When it dies I will probably attempt your Mailbox Notifier". Nice video!

[@jstro-hobbytech]

Great Video. You explained previously about the mhz bands and how they are region specific (if I'm not mistaken).

[@korgmangeek]

What is the problem with LoRaWAN and TTN? You don't have a gateway? In that case have you tried NbTrans? kzbin.info/www/bejne/nHeXm2Z4dq12kMk All other systems add noise. [meshtastic / 1:1]

[@EdoDijkgraaf]

Very inspiring! If our disabled friend had Home Assistant, I would have a really cool birthday present now.

[@damianbutterworth2434]

Hi, I used data cable to my mailbox and an arduino. I even got an industrial machine traffic light to come on red when post arrived. Then when I took the mail out using the lower door it would reset.

[@nashaut7635]

@13:00 I also use that method. However I recently switched to using GPIO registers and bits to decide upon what to do. There are two reasons: bit testing and branching takes only one instruction on AVR (see SBRC/SBRS for instance) and is faster than comparing bytes then branching. Second GPIO registers (which area mostly accessed with in/out instructions instead of more costly STS/LDS) aren't used most of the time. These two combined is such that flag testing in interrupts requires no push/pop, which is even faster.

[@studiociodo]

The ebyte module have PDF manual, that explain how you can set "speed on air", lower Speed mean big spreading factor. There Is a setting PIN that with low state enter in configuration mode with AT command

[@heyron94700]

Thanks for this nice video! Correct me if i'm wrong, but one big advantage I see using Lorawan is built-in data encryption, which I believe is missing with a "raw" Lora communication.

[@AttilaAsztalos]

I'm really confused even after trying to re-watch a few times - you're saying that LoRaWAN is inadequate because it uses unconfirmed messages yet then somehow immediately proceed to use LoRaWAN with confirmed messages...? Which is it then?

[@morbos]

For nodes I use the STM32WL parts, it has the semtech ip on die w/ an L4 style STM32. One stop shopping. Rak wireless has some 3.3v boards for about 15$us. I program them using the Ada language in a port i did of Adacores stuff but there are other potentially easier alternatives. The server i use curr is a nodemcu w/spi connected 1276, I plan on replacing it as it occasionally loses the lora module after some days. (I have a keep alive node on the network that xmits a ping every 5mins so that can be used to reboot the lora if not recvd).

[@mutantthegreat7963]

Gruss from Allschwil. I find LoRa a bit overkill for such simple use-cases. I use ASK modules which can go very far if done properly.

[@k98killer]

What is the time period in which the 1% transmission time rule is calculated? A minute? An hour? A day? If you set it small enough, say 1 ns, you'll never be able to transmit anything since you'll always be using either 0% or close to 100% transmission time.

[@stepan44]

I'm also thinking to create a mailbox notifier, but i want it to work with standard gateway connected to TTN network. Any ideas on this or maybe some good examples?

[@jstro-hobbytech]

I'm building a dedicated server with old pc parts. I have a ryzen 5800 so there's no igpu and I'm waiting for the new rtx5090 announcement to save money and use my old one or sell it and buy a crappy one and have some extra spending money. Which model transceiver should I buy (east coast canada)? I have a large piece of property and want to set up sensors for my flag pole, pool pump, firewood shed, detached garage/wood shop, generator (anti-theft). I'm rambling, sorry Andreas I do that to you alot. Mental health issues, I'm annoying but harmless and mean well. I'm also getting a ham license and plan to build my first radio. Some of the parts are already on order. I have a software engineering degree but ended up being a 911 supervisor and was in charge of checking all sorts of vhf, uhf, tmr systems as we were in contact with fire departments on the opposite side of the cape breton highlands as well. Some departments still used phone in pager systems. Being a nerd, I always asked the Motorola tech about everything and it was cool to see the evolution of rf technologies we used as new ones came out and we maintained the old ones as backup. There was 4x redundancy in some cases depending on geographic factors. Uneccessarry story: The tmr radios were very impressive but I was told very expensive as push to talk was a charge per click from the monopolized telecommunications company. Went from government to hybrid to private to a Bell buyout that made it a headache to service contract companies who fixed everything from pos systems to our 911 servers. I wouldn't fix anything unless I had to because it took money out of the worker's pockets who got called out 24/7. Snow storms were the edge cases where I had to make decisions being in charge of the employees I worked with and public safety. As soon as someone grew familiar with the server room they hired a new it company and eventually the dregs of the industry minded critical systems because they paid the least and their contract tenders underbid everyone. They offered me a junior programmer job for gis backend development at a job fair years prior but i turned it down as a friend showed me their code base a few years prior. A mixture of c, c++, visual basic and ms office access with a custom 'borrowed from netscape' html renderer i couldve wtitten in a day my first year of school. This was before facebook and google. I learned that 90 percent of the info tech industry is propped up by 10 percent. It's partly why I changed majors after 2 years in school as well haha. I burnt out in my late 30s and retired as the stress was too much. Helping people was extremely rewarding but we were understaffed with a high turnover rate. I was in charge of training as well and so much nepotism led to our workplace being the 'foot in the door place' for people who had no interest in the job or human kindness in some cases and would eventually go to tax collection desk jobs in our union. Our union was impossible to get fired from, even during probation. It led me to despising unions and beurocratic bloat in government departments. I took a demotion my last year there hoping just doing the job of helping the public would make a difference, along with outside help from the private health care sector I paid out of pocket, not covered by our benefits. The damage was already done and led me to not leaving my house for 5 years. I am alot better now and leaning into our shared hobby and writing music have been the biggest helps. One of your new years videos still resonates with me and is why I watch your videos so faithfully. That and you're not an advertising-based creator who only does mailbags and device reviews. Alot of these same people have the gall to ask people for more money a month on patreon tiers higher than my bidirectional 1.5gig internet bill each month. There's also a lot of people on KZbin with (real or imagined) engineering degrees propped up by pcbway who are going to realize that being a content creator who relies on free gear for reviews or mailbag videos counts not as work experience when the ccp decides their soft power propaganda fund money is better spent elsewhere and a whole pillar of the genre I used to love just collapses. I have warned some former creator friends (who I care about) of this very real possibility and I'm treated like I'm crazy. I'm not including mailbag based creators in this group. That is a sub genre of sorts with a bit of value and alot of great, funny people in some cases who are not mortgage-dependent on ad revenue. I've seen alot of great creators who just wanted to teach and hopefully make a go of it financially turn sloth, gluttonous for money and become intellectually bereft, fooling themselves they are still the same. Sorry if that seems meandering and harsh. It makes new people to the hobby have a harder time gaining a foothold base of knowledge to determine the million different and awesome facets of this hobby to pursue next. I see no sign of you ever doing that haha.

[@SightsToKeepInSight]

Let me pass to you my similar project. Not using Lora, but simple esp8266 wifi, because I have wifi reachable. Also, like yours, I want to be notified as soon as someone (postman) touches/opens the mailbox to put something. My system has really low comsumption, that's why i opted to a battery approach. But why? Because the device is always shutdown until it is triggered. How did i make it boot? I have a magnetic switch that is triggered with a small magnet ring. That ring is threaded in a small fibre cord lead (fisherman cord). When the box is opened the magned is released and the gravity moves the magnet in the cord until it touches the switch. When that happens, the device starts, boots the code, connects to wifi and then upon sucessfull connection, sends a mqqt (mosquito) message. After sent sucessfully, the device shutsdown again. So the only time it's spending battery is during that process. That way I only charge the battery once a week or more. Then, I receive the alert in my homeassistant (with a mobile alert) and I go to the mailbox to get the letter/package. Downside: If I receive a 2nd package or any letter (from a different carrier) before i go to the postbox and reset the system, I'm not being notified anymore. I can live with that, since usually i only use one carrier and they come only one time each day. What do you thing about this?

[@SunriseSearcher]

Hi Andreas, what do you use to power your sensor/brains in your mailbox? Where do you get the power? Edit: Was too fast :) Batteries

[@raymitchell9736]

I use the switch statement with the ENUMs for the state names. In your case the state machine is straightforward. But when you have error states, timeouts, interrupting events, abort processes, sub states, and a whole bunch of other things... this state machine strategy can explode the number of states on your design. Simply adding an Enter and an Exit with dispatcher logic can greatly wrangle the states and soothe your headache.

[@karl6355]

Your power-consumption data-log shows a base current of 2mA (not in microA range) -you probably tested the power-consumption in standby/suspend and they where out of scope for this video. Archiving the Datasheets standby is often not trivial and i would not trust myself to have done that unless i measured. Since the ra-02 is a sx1278 it probably also has a low standby, if switched into sleep mode the ra-02 Datasheet seems to specify standby (ready to do something) only. You would not need to cut power (mosfet) to it if the driver/program handles the sleep-mode.

[@threepe0]

The confirmation requirement seems odd to me… you can just build a confirmation and require that in whatever implementation you’re using to call lorawan or espnow library. If you have to decision around whether the message was confirmed either way (wake up periodically to retry if the message wasn’t confirmed for example) Whether or not the protocol supports it under the hood seems like gravy, not necessary at all.

[@CTCTraining1]

Very good 👍. I was going to suggest adding the current battery voltage into the notification but if it last for 8 years on one pair of batteries it probably isn’t worth the effort. Keep up the great work 😀👍

[@doyourhomework7305]

Can't you use windows terminal instead of putty.

[@electrobob]

One of the most useful things about my diy sensor network is that each sensor has a max update interval which forces the sensor to send an update of the current state, even if there is no change. This helps with some edge cases, but it is a good way to monitor the network. A "time since last update" bar chart for the network can immediately tell me if something is wrong.

[@billynomates920]

the battery life is very good. i don't know an awful lot about electronics so maybe it has to do more and do it differently but my wireless thermostat takes 4 aa batteries every 3 years to cover a range of 5 metres not km!

[@VLandrew]

Second video with Making a PCB and case,

[@qcsupport2594]

Using the state machine design made the code very easy to understand.

[@IndependentNewsMedia]

Nice overview video, God bless.

[@SA-oj3bo]

would ESP Now not do the job?

[@lucdesvaux8230]

I this better than LoRaWAN “confirm” mode? We use this for more critical I/O modules and sensors with great success.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Thanks for sharing your experience. I never tried it.

[@dougbas3980]

I see the E32 family goes up to 37 dBm with corresponding price tag. At least for HAMs, that could really reach out, maybe talk to a vehicle.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Indeed. I did not check how they are programmed (and cooled ;-)

[@dougbas3980]

Glad to be a Patreon supporter. Again you read my mind; even all the way from Michigan. I have played with Meshtastic and have decided my home automation can be done better with less complex LoRa methods. This video is right on target for me. My mailbox is 300M from house (I am on 10 acres (4 hectares) of land). Notice nested parentheses, I must be a programmer (LOL). I also want low power security mesh to be aware of what is on my land (deer in garden or unwanted 'guest') [gates, motion, doors, etc.]. My home-assistant system is on a solar battery bank. If I lose power, some of my automation is still running. If there is an EMP, then my hand tools will be 'high tech', otherwise, I will have some tech working. Thank you for all you do and share. Doug, N8VY 👍

[@AndreasSpiess]

Thank you for your support, Doug! Actually, I was in Chicago and Milwaukee this summer on my way to Las Vegas. So the "reading" did not need to travel far ;-) 73

[@PhG1961]

Really awesome video! My kind of topic!

[@AndreasSpiess]

Glad you enjoyed it! Enjoy Sunday.

[@jaredharvey1511]

Could you do a POE esp32-cam video? I want to build my own doorbell POE cam. I'm struggling with POE on an ESP32 platform.

[@AndreasSpiess]

I once did a video about PoE. So far, I was not very interested in ESP32 and video :-(

[@jaredharvey1511]

@@AndreasSpiess seems m5stack makes such a device. Learning about that now.

[@sveinarsandvin6418]

Your videos are fantastic.

[@AndreasSpiess]

Glad you like them!

[@arp_catchall]

Thanks Andreas. Why not use EspNow for mailbox monitoring since its not too far from the house? Seems simpler, cheaper and EspNow has acknowledgements.

[@zerog2000]

EspNow has sort of similar range to wifi (but without wifi APs) at 2.4GHz. It’s different from Lora which operate on lower bands, lower speeds, and much farther ranges.

[@AndreasSpiess]

If it would work: You are rhght. But Wi-Fi signals have a much smaller range than LoRa. And, as I said: Our mailbox is nearly a faraday cage...

[@وهابالربيعي]

channel spacing is 410MHz+(channel x 1MHz) .... small correction

[@AndreasSpiess]

Thanks!

[@hyneklos]

nice!

[@AndreasSpiess]

Thanks!

[@CPD-KD6-3.7]

Jesus, last time I was this early, the UK was still part of the EU!

[@AndreasSpiess]

Long time ago! But still remembered, obviously ;-)

[@Earth_Rim_Roamer]

I prefer becky

[@AndreasSpiess]

What is becky?

[@nbessell]

Than “Laura” (Lora) I am guessing 😉

[@twonkel]

2 Alkaline batteries would only supply 3V. Do you have an additional boost circuit to boost it to 3.3V or is 3V still within tolerance?

[@AndreasSpiess]

Both, the ATTINY and the E32 are rated down to at least 2.3V