And it's up, ready to gather data from sensors I'll be placing in our wetlands. The 6 metre mast is just for testing, if all works well the device will go much higher.
And we'll find a better way to mount the mast. Right now it's stuck in a pipe attached to our rainwater tank. That moose bone we found nearby a few years ago is jammed in the pipe and keeps the whole thing stable.
And this is the #LoRaWAN sensor I carry around for testing. It's very power hungry and we found a solution, but eventually we'll have to put that battery back in the lawn mower.
You are so wetland-solarpunk 🤩 
@earthworm To be solarpunk I'd have to install some solar panels, right?
Lol.
I was thinking about this and first had written wetlandpunk, but was unsure whether anybody would understand it 😅
But solarpunks can live in caves and feed on fungi, if necessary. It's a diverse concept 
@earthworm Great idea! I'm going to use #WetlandPunk as often as I can! Unfortunately we can't live in caves – they're all flooded.
@szescstopni moose bone powered #LoRaWAN 🦴
@RoboticistDuck Sort of. It would really be "powered" if I burned the bone near a thermocouple, so it's rather "supported" :) But it definitely is an element of our hardware stack.
@szescstopni is LoRA line of sight?
@jerzone No, but I have no idea what the leaves will do when the spring comes – they'll certainly interfere.
@szescstopni at the dollar store here they sell L Shaped USB-C/micro USB adapters that might come in handy for saving space in an application like this.
@RoboticistDuck I'm sure I could find one easily – had I lived in a larger town. The drive to the nearest electronics store is 60 km there and back. I have no manual skills – most of the work was done by a technician who drove all the way to my place and there was no time to go to a store if we wanted to get the gateway up in the air. More connectors are now on their way – for the second gateway.
@szescstopni another idea is to cut the plastic housing off the male micro-USB/USB-C connector and let it go naked inside the weather resistant box.
@RoboticistDuck We didn't think of that. And we had a lot of cable glands lying around. And that cool drill to make holes in plastic :)
@szescstopni I just see every hole in an enclosure like that (with or without a proper gland) as yet another potential ingress for water 💦
@RoboticistDuck So do I. I've had to replace so many devices that technicians didn't close properly. This is temporary, proof of concept.
@szescstopni it’s definitely a cool setup. Hope you’ll report more activities like this 🗼
@RoboticistDuck Having access to our rural broadband equipment is fun. Here I'm carrying a 6 meter mast to pick apples from an old tree in an abandoned orchard :)
@szescstopni if you dont mind me asking, what is the dB of the antenna you are using for the gateway? Roughly, how much area are you trying to cover?
I am very close to deploying my gateway on my roof but still havent decided on the dB of the antenna. Judging from your pictures, we are going to be dealing with similar issues as I too will have to deal with a lot of leaves come spring.
@PlumpCat I honestly don't know the gain, but I'll let you know tomorrow – other people working on this project will know :) Bear in mind that this is a sparsely populated area with little interference, so I'm not sure how our experiences, which we will share somewhere pretty soon, is applicable to your situation. I definitely will try to see how a LoRaWAN tracker works on our dogs :)
@szescstopni oh man I look forward to seeing how the dog tracking works!! That will be cool to see. Too bad dead reckoning gps devices cost so much still!
@PlumpCat The latest LoRaWAN specification allows for triangulation, we'll be testing that some time in the future – the experimental gateway doesn't have this capability. Still waiting for info on the antenna gain.
@szescstopni ah yes the Time Difference of Arrival or TDOA! My gateway is also incapable of this but all new gateways I purchase will come with this feature. I am quite interested to see how accurate something like that can be. From paper it seems like it would be extremely accurate! Thanks for checking the gain!
Though our projects have a lot of differences, I am certain to experience some sort of "leaf fade" come the spring and would love to have an example to sort of compare to a bit. Don't feel like you need to go out of your way for that. My project involves nobody else but myself, yours seems like a big job!
@PlumpCat I'm not sure about the precision of TDOA. I hope I'll have a few stationary sensors soon to see how leaves interfere. I'm in the very early stage of learning this stuff, but fortunately I work with people who know what they're doing. will share results, and I guess we'll be in touch regarding tracking.
@szescstopni it's essentially a LoRaWAN BTS! NOICE
I got the wong PoE power supply – micro USB instead of USB-C. And that tiny white converter made the whole thing too large to fit. So we had to make a tiny hole for the cable to fit. But had nothing to close the hole with on hand. We did have a cable gland, which gave us enough space for the power cable. A car light bulb was lying around and it was just the right size to plug the cable gland and keep the whole thing relatively waterproof.