MicroPython Forum (Archive)

What I can read between the lines in this link: The statement of a 1 km range is based on rumour and whishful thinking.

Interesting but not very informative. As for the LoPy I would be disappointed if it failed to achieve 1KM. That is the point of LoRa and much greater ranges have been achieved by skilled radio amateurs with high gain antennas.

The 1KM claim for WiFi range in a regulatory-compliant piece of kit is a brave one to make in sales literature. Buyers are not going to expect to erect Yagi aerials on masts in the Sahara to achieve it.

As for people achieving such ranges with the ESP8266, I've watched that YouTube video. 1.1KM barely worked, with plenty of dropped packets, under outdoor line-of-sight conditions in an environment which was probably fairly quiet from an RF point of view. Typical usage it was not, and my own experience with the ESP8266 under more normal conditions suggests its performance in respect of range is as one would expect. 100M on a good day, intermittently, if you're lucky.

I will be astonished if the new device gains regulatory approval and achieves anything like the claimed range under typical operating conditions.

pythoncoder wrote:I will be astonished if the new device gains regulatory approval and achieves anything like the claimed range under typical operating conditions.

Email from Pycom, "Project Update #23: LoPy – the LoRa, WiFi and Bluetooth IoT development platform by Pycom", October 10th 2016, and "Project Update #25: LoPy – the LoRa, WiFi and Bluetooth IoT development platform by Pycom", from October 16th 2016, say :
"...The LoPy successfully passed the FCC/CE certifications..."
"...the LoPy (and new WiPy) both passed FCC/CE certification..."

The ESP32 underlying it quotes 21dBm max transmit and -98dBm receive (DSSS @1Mbps).

Using a naive calculation of free space loss based on: -L = 32.5 + 20 * log(1) + 20 * log(2415) solves -L ~100dBm therefore with ideal conditions 1km might be achieved with a typical ~-15dB margin if antenna gain/loss essentially cancel out. You would still be closer to 50m for a 54Mbps OFDM link of course, but 1Mbps DSSS is still standards compliant "WiFi".

Note: I'm not expecting an ESP32 to manage a useful 1km WiFi link (not without Mesh anyway), I'm just speculating how one might derive that range figure. I'm skeptical about the -98dBm, but that's an Espressif figure, not a WiPy one.

Hello,

Apologies for the silence, as some of you have already noticed we have been super busy the last weeks with the manufacturing of the boards and lately shipping them the Kickstarter backers.

The WiFi 1KM range is a feature of the ESP32 and it works by putting it into a special mode (while still being WiFi compliant). We will release more details shortly.

Regarding the open source discussion, Pymakr is going to be released today, we wanted to clean up the code first.

It's not our intention to split the MicroPython community into 2, but since there are many things which are too specific to our boards, specially now that the software is in an early stage, we are encouraging our backers to go to forum.pycom.io with all their support requests. At this moment we just don't have enough resources to post in both forums. I hope that this is understandable.

Cheers,
Daniel

Pymakr is now on Github:

https://github.com/pycom/Pymakr

https://github.com/pycom/Pymakr-kitchen

Many thanks Daniel.

The link in your signature doesn't seem to work - http://www.wipy.io ?

Jim

pythoncoder wrote:Interesting but not very informative. As for the LoPy I would be disappointed if it failed to achieve 1KM. That is the point of LoRa and much greater ranges have been achieved by skilled radio amateurs with high gain antennas.

We reached 134km distance with LoRa a week ago tracking a CESSNA airplane. No directional antenna used. Gateway was a professional telco-grade Kerlink equipment, GPS tracker was inside of cockpit with small omni-directional antenna, far from optimal installation. Still radio link was not at the limit, distance was limited by the horizon. You can read details here:

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/tracking ... =prof-post

jgmdavies wrote:Many thanks Daniel.

The link in your signature doesn't seem to work - http://www.wipy.io ?

Jim

it has changed to
https://www.pycom.io/

danicampora wrote:... we are encouraging our backers to go to forum.pycom.io with all their support requests. At this moment we just don't have enough resources to post in both forums...

In this case I think it is in everyone's interest to make it clear that this subforum is unofficial. Can I suggest that the title be changed to something like "The WiPy - unofficial discussion" and a permanent message be displayed pointing users to your official support forum.

This should reduce much of the existing frustration and help preserve the reputation of both communities. Hopefully you will then be able to offer an adequate level of official support for the WiPy.