Oh, nice! The Xiao seed, unlike the Heltec’s I have, comes with 8 MB of PSRAM which makes it suitable for acting as a store-and-forward node.
May have to pick up at least one of these since that’s one thing I’d like to add to the mesh I’m putting together.
+1
I had been trying to do the mental figuring on a zero w and Lora antenna to have a local area Usenet like, or even just email since the use cases go up when it isn’t live or nothing.
What’s the range and power consumption of these bad boys?
Depends but I have some cheap esp based heltech knock offs from temu that do about 2km from being haphazardly taped into my upstairs windows. Power draw is about 200ma but I don’t bother with deep sleep or other optimizations. I’m in a flat suburban area.
I imagine it’d be much better if I whipped them up on the chimney with proper antenna but for something that just fits in my pocket they’re really impressive.
Its 800/900ish MHz depending in where in the world you are. So UHF ranges. 1 to five mile range can be expected just carrying one around with a rubber duck style antenna. Range goes up considerably if you out it up in top of your house, fivish to twenty. Pit on a dedicated mast or high building with clear sight lines? Could get up to fifty miles.
Current record I think is 170 miles but that’s transmitting from a mountain top and I think a directional antenna.
For vhf/UHF the key is ‘height is might.’ That’s why I can use a handheld and, with the right antenna, hit the ISS but also have maybe five miles point to point and need a repeater to hit anywhere of worth.
I live in an earthquake zone and have been taking CERT emergency training courses. Have been looking at these as part of a neighborhood emergency network.
Turns out SeedStudio sells these with a base that comes with a display and a bunch of grove connectors, as well as a cheap GPS module. Will have to think a bit more on what else may be needed (keyboard, display, battery, vibration, or other environmental sensors?)
It may be possible to build one of these for < $50USD and hopefully cheaper, then have each emergency sector in the city keep one as part of their emergency cache. Would be useful if cell networks and power go out.
