This seems like a great technology to build resiliency and redundancy in a community, especially for places where cell service is spotty, or in the odd event where normal lines of communication are blocked.
The LoRa boards can be easily powered with a small solar panel for continuous use, and if put in a high enough place with a good antenna, they can have a surprisingly long range!
In addition to being genuinely useful, they also seem like theyโd be a lot of fun to experiment and play around with, printing cool 3D cases for them, or designing a better antenna or repeater setup.
If and of you already have experience with LoRa, Iโd be interested to hear your thoughts! :D
The antenna makes a huge difference too. With a $20 fibreglass 3dBi omnidirectional antenna that was only 26cm long, I was able to exceed 4km in a city with no line of sight. There were probably a ton of firmware and software improvements since you tried though, to be fair.
