lora development boards

RFM95W-915S2 Development Board

This repository contains the design of a development board for the RFM95W-915S2. The PCB was designed using KiCad.

The RFM95W-915S2 Development board is a PCB that contains a RFM95W LoRa transceiver, a U.FL connector for the external antenna, a decoupling capacitor and a group of headers connected to the different pins of the transceiver. The transceiver can be used as a sender or a receiver.

Table of Contents

1. Schematic
2. Bill of Materials
3. 3D Model
4. Firmware and Testing
5. Authors

Schematic

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Bill of Materials

Reference	Quantity
RFM95W-915S2 LoRa™ Transceiver Module 915MHz SMD	1
10 µF ±10% 6.3V Ceramic Capacitor 0805	1
U.FL (UMCC) Connector Receptacle, Male Pin 50 Ohm SMD	1
Conn Header 40POS 2.54	1

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3D Model

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Firmware and Testing

The webpage randomnerdtutorials.com has an amazing tutorial named ESP32 with LoRa using Arduino IDE – Getting Started, that tutorial contains detailed information about how to use the RFM95 with an ESP32 (the same microcontroller that was selected for our designs). I used the same firmware and connections provided by the tutorial.

The test requires 2 transceivers, one of them will be used as a sender and the other as a receiver. In this case, one of the transceivers is the RFM95W-915S2 Development board and the other one is the RFM95W transceiver from Adafruit.

The connections are the following:

ESP32	RFM95W-915S2 Development Board
3V3	3.3V
GND	GND
GPIO 14	RST
GPIO 5	CS
GPIO 18	SCK
GPIO 23	MOSI
GPIO 19	MISO

ESP32	RFM95W Board from Adafruit
3V3	VIN
GND	GND
GPIO 14	RST
GPIO 5	CS
GPIO 18	SCK
GPIO 23	MOSI
GPIO 19	MISO

This repository contains a folder named /Firmware/ that contains the project for the transceiver as a receiver and a sender.

Both of the RFM95W Boards were used as a sender and receiver, the result was successful in both cases. During the test, one of the transceivers sends the package "hello counter", where the counter is a number that goes from 0 to 32767. The other transceiver receives the package and prints the message through serial.

Requisites

1. ESP32 Add-on in Arduino IDE
2. LoRa Library

Results visualized in the serial monitor from the receiver circuit:

For more information about the firmware visit the original tutorial for the RFM95W.

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Authors

• Leonardo Ward

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