ESP32 with LoRa

[dhanushmh]

Hello all,

I am new here and new to ESP32 too.
I have case study where I need to develop a remote setup to analyse wind speed using ESP32. As I said it's remote, I won't have any access to internet there so I would be opting for LoRa for example, RFM95 module for ESP32. There will be a RPi where I will have slightly decent communication access and I want to receive the data from ESP32 through LoRa and send it to cloud using RPi. Can someone please tell me how can I carry out this? What kind of structure I should be using?

Please ignore if I explained something weird here because I am new to this topic. All inputs are appreciated. Thank you so much

[electrik]

Have your tried googling on ESP32 LoRa?
There are ready made boards that have these, and can run mysensors also. For example the ones from Heltec.
Does this answer your question?

[OldSurferDude]

@dhanushmh

I am unfamiliar with an ESP32 as a MySensors sensor; though it certainly looks do-able.

Only because you won't be using the WiFi of the ESP32, I'd recommend an Arduino. The ESP32 requires 600mA.

Your radio will use up to 120mA (range of about 2km).

Of course, these power consideration aren't important if you have power at this remote location.

There are a couple of well documented hoops in getting the ESP32 board into the Arduino IDE.

On your RPi, I recommend using the MQTT interface with the MySensors Gateway. This will require an MQTT broker. You could use a public one (not recommended) or set up one on the computer that will be receiving the data into the database.

I use Home Assistant to receive data. MySensors integrates well into it. I admit that I don't know how to extract data from its database, but it provides an easy way to graph the data.

So it goes like this

• Get the Arduino IDE
  Load the ESP32 board
  Select the ESP32 board
  Using the library manager, download the MySensors library
  Start with the example EnergyMeterPulseSensor because your wind speed sensor probably uses pulses.

• On the RPi you'll download the gateway files. The instructions here are pretty good
  There are three steps,
  configuration (which takes some thought)
  compiling (make) (you can run the gateway at this point)
  installing (make install) This makes the program run on boot

• Instructions for getting the MQTT broker installed and running are found by searching for "install MQTT broker" You'll need to know the the machine name and/or the IP address of the broker for both MySensors and Home Assistant

• The learning curve for Home Assistant is tough. Don't be intimidated, you can do it.

Come back here if you need more help.

[FarmerEd]

@dhanushmh
Here is my project using mySensors and LoRa modules for sensors around a farm.
https://farmer-eds-shed.com/?s=lora

[ZenBlizzard]

Hey!

If you're using ESP32 with LoRa (RFM95) and a Raspberry Pi gateway, here are some quick tips:

Hardware: Heltec ESP32 + LoRa boards work great with MySensors.

Power: ESP32 (~600mA) + LoRa (~120mA) can drain batteries fast—Arduino might be better.

Software: Use Arduino IDE for ESP32 (try EnergyMeterPulseSensor), and set up an MQTT gateway on the RPi. Home Assistant works well for data visualization.

Real-World Tips: MySensors + LoRa is great for farm/weather monitoring—checking similar projects can help.