Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow

Re:Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow by bsder on Monday January 04, 2016 @10:28PM (#10840909)

Except that I can't buy it, it doesn't seem to have a stack, and doesn't have any open implementations to examine.

But, other than that, LoraWan is better.

Uh, yeah. Come back when LoraWan is shipping something other than vapor.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow by jotux on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @12:01AM (#10841315)

>Except that I can't buy it

Microchip sells radios that do LoRa: http://www.microchip.com/pagehandler/en-us/technology/person...

They're available on mouser for ~$17: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip/RN2483-I-RM095...

>it doesn't seem to have a stack, and doesn't have any open implementations to examine.

Here's the source code for a development board with LoRa: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/LoRaMotePack...

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow by hodwik on Monday January 04, 2016 @10:46PM (#10840995)

So Sematech and Tata's LoraWan plan in India is vaporware? They claimed successful tests, and said their network is open to testing end-to-end by IoT developers.

This is a serious question, I just moved most of my stock portfolio into Sematech after that news. If Sematech's LoraWan is real, this is the best pureplay futurist stock I've seen since Tobii.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow by bsder on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @05:33PM (#10846607)

UWB was a wonderful technology and claimed successful tests and was open to developers. So was WiMAX (which actually did work). Where are they now?

Almost all the TI low-power RF stuff is real. Anything LoraWAN claims could have been done with these kinds of TI chips: http://www.ti.com/product/cc1125

So, why hasn't it? Mostly because these frequencies need big external antennas. TI has a very nice whitepaper about trying to create integrated PCB antennas for these lower frequencies and how much power you lose (answer--a whole lot). I don't think people are going to be very happy strapping a 6 inch whip antenna onto their tiny LED light.

And, these TI chips actually can run off a coin cell. Unlike the loraWAN stuff which flags Tx power consumption as up to 100mA. Coin cells are still ruled out.

That's not an improvement over, well, anything.

And, I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. This is Microchip. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Wi-Fi Alliance introduces low power, long range Wi-Fi HaLow by jotux on Tuesday January 05, 2016 @07:52PM (#10847478)

>I note that Microchip is claiming to be shipping dev kits sometime this quarter. I won't hold my breath, and I still mark this as vapor.

As of a few minutes ago seven in stock at mouser: http://www.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Microchip-Technology/DM1...

[ Parent | on HN ]