For those of you who want an extremely simple build, I've reduced it to just 5 parts: one 1-megaohm resistor (0805 SMD) one Arduino Pro Mini one Ra-01 LoRa module Male header pins Battery clips See photos.

@kiesel - the number is set to 10 and this is nothing I can change, sorry. You can PM me about which setting you need to set and I can help you.

@sundberg84 I know that everything I've read says the radio cannot use 5v, but when hooked up to my bench power supply and connecting my multimeter leads to the NRF24L01+, it says it's getting 5v AND it's the only scenario where the node can successfully find the gateway and send/receive data. I tried swapping out the radio and it was the exact same scenario. I'm getting NACK debugging messages on the gateway when it's trying to accept the node as a child. The only thing I haven't tried is replacing the booster. For the moment, I wired up a second node with all new components and (after remembering to solder everything) it connected to the gateway right away. It's been running for about 30 minutes, so I'll post back after a time when I know if it will stop working or run until the batteries drain completely. Side note: thanks for making such an awesome board!