• Designer; vasyl
• Design platform; Flux
• Wireless; Programmable LoRa module
• Power; Battery with solar panel input
• Board construction; Two-layer
• Project version; #dd7dcdcc
• Flux project; https://www.flux.ai/vasyl/portable-lorawan-board~0pb
• Source repository; https://github.com/MoChANvAsIl/Portable-LoRaWAN-board

Overview

This project is a portable LoRaWAN board designed by vasyl that carries a programmable LoRa module and can run autonomously from a battery and a solar panel. In practice, that describes a self-sufficient wireless node: a board that can be placed outdoors, kept charged by sunlight, and left to communicate over long distances with no mains power and no regular maintenance.

Why This Design Is Useful

LoRa and LoRaWAN are built for low-power, long-range communication, which makes them popular for sensor networks, remote monitoring, agriculture, asset tracking and similar field applications. The difficulty is usually power. A sensor node is only as useful as its ability to stay alive, and swapping batteries across many remote devices is slow and costly.

This board tackles that problem directly by combining the radio with a battery-and-solar power system on one PCB. The creator's tags, #mppt and #solar, point to maximum power point tracking for the solar input, a technique that draws as much usable energy as possible from the panel under changing light. The #stm tag suggests an STM microcontroller platform, and because the module is programmable, builders are free to write their own firmware for it.

Board and Manufacturing Package

The design is published as a complete fabrication package. The Gerber set covers top and bottom copper, solder mask, solder paste, silkscreen and board outline, which shows that this is a two-layer board, a practical and economical choice for a compact node. The package also includes an Excellon drill file, an IPC-D-356 electrical test netlist, and a pick-and-place CSV for automated assembly. Bills of materials are provided in formats prepared for several manufacturers, including a version optimised for PCBWay, so the design can go from files to an assembled board without reformatting any data.

Source Files and Further Reading



The creator maintains a GitHub repository for the project, which is the best place to find the latest files and any additional documentation: https://github.com/MoChANvAsIl/Portable-LoRaWAN-board

Credits

This board was designed by vasyl. All design work and credit belong to the original author. Please visit the original Flux project and the GitHub repository, explore the design in full, and show the creator some support.