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by freakynit·6y ago·view on hn ↗
This is nice :)

Two parts can be replaced I guess with better alternatives though:

1. Risc-v chips for esp8266. Why? Because they are built on open source standard, are cheaply available, and are generally very powerful.

2. 802.11ah for LoRa. Why? Well, lora is highly optimized towards power optimization at the expense of data transfer rate. Data rates offered by LoRa might not be suitable for anything much demanding other that IoT. 802.11ah on other hand is also optimized for power, but still can operate up to at multiple 100mbps of data rates, with range in many KM's and supporting thousands of connections per installment.

This might help: https://www.electronicdesign.com/industrial-automation/what-...

2 comments
ESP8266 is cheaper than RISC-V and powerful enough. It's not open source but that doesn't seem to be a deal breaker for this project.

802.11ah has only 1km range which is not enough for this purpose. LoRa is rated at more than 10km range at 292bit/s up to 50kbit/s. Also the chip used in this project costs only around $6.

Are there any RISC-V cores with WiFi and good software / toolchain support available for about $1 today? I wasn't aware of any, but I guess chips like those GD32Vs have been getting popular quickly...