Re:DIY Smartphone Lora Connection (2021)
by eternityforest on Wednesday July 06, 2022 @10:04PM
(#32009168)
It's not exactly small, or low power. These protocols mostly work with always on receivers using 7 to 14mA at all times.
Plus "LoRa" isn't a thing, it's a low level protocol, the applications space is still kind of figuring itself out.
It's also absurdly low bandwidth. LoRa chips work on a single channel at once, and the modes with the best range have only a few bytes to hundred of bytes per second. Shared by everyone in a large area.
It would be fantastic for emergency use in rural areas and for long range Tile like trackers, but to really get the benefit, phones would have to be listening and doing mesh relay all the time. The privacy types wouldn't like a lot of the most exiting uses(See Sidewalk) and most people don't seem to care about preparedness enough to bother.
Solar panels are very thin, light, and relatively cheap these days. Why do we still make things that are likely to be in the sun, without panels?
Why is our whole workflow often shut down without internet?
Nobody seems to care at all about robustness. Everyone either doesn't think about it at all, or takes a "Life happens, can't plan for everything, deal with it when it happens" approach.
An even bigger question is why we don't actually use Bluetooth to it's full capability. There is no offline BT mesh app popular enough that anyone I know ever talks about anything of the sort.
Nobody cares about P2P and the interest there was got totally eaten by blockchain. With all the crypto crash stuff there might be some new interest though.
Plus "LoRa" isn't a thing, it's a low level protocol, the applications space is still kind of figuring itself out.
It's also absurdly low bandwidth. LoRa chips work on a single channel at once, and the modes with the best range have only a few bytes to hundred of bytes per second. Shared by everyone in a large area.
It would be fantastic for emergency use in rural areas and for long range Tile like trackers, but to really get the benefit, phones would have to be listening and doing mesh relay all the time. The privacy types wouldn't like a lot of the most exiting uses(See Sidewalk) and most people don't seem to care about preparedness enough to bother.
Solar panels are very thin, light, and relatively cheap these days. Why do we still make things that are likely to be in the sun, without panels?
Why is our whole workflow often shut down without internet?
Nobody seems to care at all about robustness. Everyone either doesn't think about it at all, or takes a "Life happens, can't plan for everything, deal with it when it happens" approach.
An even bigger question is why we don't actually use Bluetooth to it's full capability. There is no offline BT mesh app popular enough that anyone I know ever talks about anything of the sort.
Nobody cares about P2P and the interest there was got totally eaten by blockchain. With all the crypto crash stuff there might be some new interest though.