Long Range Beacon with LoRa, ESP32 and Arduino

Support my work / pawelspychalski
More than a year ago I started to work on my own LoRa based LRS system. And I did it. Not fully, did not implement telemetry of over-the-air configuration, but it worked pretty nicely and I did a couple of above 1km flights with it. In the end, I've abandoned the project since my FrSky was offering the same and more with smaller hardware, but the idea stayed. Lately, I started putting together something new... The LoRa based locator beacon for, you know, locating stuff. Car, husband, wife, lost drone, you name it.
This project utilizes Arduino, ESP32 and GPS to do exactly what the name says: make a long-range beacon based on LoRa and SX1278 chipsets from Semtech.
LoRa32u4 II LoRa 868/915MHz development board: bit.ly/2nJv9dd
LORA32 v2 ESP32 898/915MHz development board: bit.ly/2BjG47d
Beitian BN-220 GPS bit.ly/2B8h5jV
Beitian Matek M9N-5883 bit.ly/3fYyWPP
QmuBeacon! Right. Qmu stands for QuadMeUp ( quadmeup.com ) and Beacon stands for a beacon since it will be a UAV recovery beacon with a handy locator. LoRa modulation should give it a decent range with low output power.
My main problem will be, as usual, small hardware. The locator can be big, no problem, but I wonder how small I can go with DIY, no custom PCB approach...
#quadmeup
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[@nadieselgirl]

Glad to see you revive this project!

[@vasobg12]

Nice project! Will be very useful and redundant If you can implement some gsm module and for example, when you text it, it gives you back the last known coordinates.

[@dukevah]

Great project. I developed almost the same hardware around 6-7 years ago when lora became popular. It is well suited for this application. However, after many tests I came to the conclusion that it requires a custom gps antenna. The reason is that if quad flips you will not get the gps coordinates. I also implemented buffering mechanism to send back last valid gps coordinates but it has never given me the exact location of my quad. I investigated the idea of external antenna embedded into the box and it will works but it requires a good antennas designer guy! Btw, I also had buzzer on the tracker. I hope you can make it work. It is a great idea as I said and will have a great impact.

[@91octa]

Hi!! Great project and really handy to avoid loosing an expensive model!! For those of us that are not so techie would you consider a DIY video with steps to build some device like this one?? Many thanks and keep on with the channel that i really learn a lot with it

[@darrensontos1012]

Sounds like something that could be built into the Remote ID modules we will have to have soon. Silver lining?

[@thevene]

Hello Pavel, could this be used with the INAV radar system??

[@PSAfterHours]

They are not compatible

[@andrejmirt]

What happens when gps is pointed away from the sky. In case of a crash? Do you still recive the GPS coordinates?

[@PSAfterHours]

The last known position is transmitted

[@angelisfpv]

What if you crash and the gps is upside down?

[@PSAfterHours]

It transmits the last known position. Plus, even upside down it should still get a fix

[@David_11111]

YAY