LoRaWAN gateways

I have a librem 5 and I want to add LoRa capabilities with a bluehtooth/wifi repeater but then I started to see these Amazon.com. Is LoRa a thing on Librem at all or should I just get a premade repeater?

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I am pretty sure that there is no LoRa hardware in the Librem 5, so if you want LoRa support then you would need to procure suitable hardware yourself. The easiest option could be a USB dongle. Trying to find a suitable (compatible) card looks like a world of pain, for a range of reasons. Regardless, with either option, there will be question marks over driver support in Linux / for ARM / with open source / …

You should do a forum search to see whether anyone is doing LoRa in conjunction with their Librem 5. I have my doubts but I like pleasant surprises. :wink:

Edit: PS That card looks to be mini-PCIe whereas I believe both card slots in the Librem 5 are M.2, and do you really want to sacrifice one of your existing cards in the Librem 5 anyway?

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With the right hardware, you might be able to use the external data port on the Librem 5, to communicate via LoRa. On another forum, I found several people who have developed a very small two-meter band amateur radio that sticks on to the back of your Android phone. That gives you a totally full featured two-meter band radio with the radio’s graphical interface running in Android and the radio hardware being powered from the phone’s USB port. The same could probably be done for LoRa.

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Possible, if I remember right, the breakout board gives up to 3.3v and i2C connection.

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