RP2040 LoRaWAN Dev Board
LoRa and LoRaWAN are constantly growing in both usage and network size. With active networks like The Things Network, OpenChirp, CableLabs and more, it’s easier to take advantage of pre-existing LoRa networks or build your own private network. Getting started is easy — take, for example, this RP2040-powered LoRaWAN development board.
With the benefits of low-power, long-distance communication, encryption and wide library support, it’s a great way to network together groups of sensors which pass data between themselves or to a central node, which can optionally forward the data onto the Internet. Combining LoRaWAN, TCP/IP, 5G, and protocols like MQTT can make for a robust and reliable full-stack solution that can be quickly set up and prototyped.
This board has everything you need to get going quickly — it features the common RP2040 dual-core ARM Cortex-M0+ chip, an LR1262 LoRa module and an antenna to get connected. A 1.8″ SPI LCD display is a great addition. It can be used in the end application and during development/debugging cycles to display information about connection status, signal strength, and sensor data, for example. There are lots of GPIO broken out, with common connectors like Grove/STEMMA for I2C and UART. There’s even an RS485 interface, which is extremely useful if interfacing with industrial networks or connecting over a long cable run to another board. USB Type-C and other SPI/I2C/UART headers round out the extensive I/O available.
The RP2040 SDK is very well documented, and communication with the LR1262 uses a simple AT command interface. Alternatively, it’s easy to flash the RP2040 with CircuitPython and quickly get a system running using existing code and libraries.