Experience with ESP32 LILYGO LoRa32 V2.1?

Boards
1

Hello everybody,

like some others here i had the idea to replace my SDR RTL-433 running on a Raspberry PI with a LILYGO LoRa32 V2.1 and OMG.
My board is a Model T3 1.6.1 with OMG 1.5.1 and my first experiments are frustrating.
The SDR RTL-433 with a 10 Euro SDR USB dongle picks up devices from neighbours on the far side of the road.
The LILYGO LoRa32 -located ~1m away from the Raspberry - receives no actual device more than 5 meters away, however it keeps detecting non-existent Skylink motion devices over and over again.

Having the SDR USB dongle free again for other experiments would be nice and the LILYGO LoRa32 seems a good choice regarding its size and power supply requirements.
However currently it’s unusable - for me at least.

I wonder if it is worth waiting for improved version of OMG or is it this board which can’t do better?

Who else is trying the LILYGO LoRa32 and what are your experiences?

Best regards,
Chris

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2

Chris, I’m using the same board and it seems very dependent on where it is located. For development it just sits on my desk in between several devices I’m ‘playing’ with (ESP32 and Raspberry Pico…). It’s currently propped up against the soldering iron, with the antenna vertical (which seems important) and picking up plenty of devices (mostly not mine :slight_smile: ).
Dave

3

Are you saying it will pickup your device if you are close?.. If so, no clue. Bad board? The SDL RTL-433 supports a lot more devices than the Lilygo.

4

@chris Try the current development build, it has a couple of tweaks of the receiver to improve reception.

This is from testing of the development branch

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OMG LilyGo TestB - Is the last development build
Heltec RTL_433 - is version 1.5.1
South-LilyGo - is version 1.5.1

These are all sitting within a 0.25 meter of each other, with the antennas vertical

If you compare the LilyGo boards, the updated release picks up 2 more of my devices and some noise ( Telldus)

5

Dave,
these plenty of devices - do they really exist?
My board keeps detecting a dozen new Skylink motion sensors each day, there is no way so many of them being installed around here all the time.
Besides not one of them is detected by my Raspberry/RTL-SDR 2832 system, so i’m sure they don’t exist.
I suspect the LILYGO - having the antenna directly attached - is picking up and decoding a lot of its own noise.
Also the antenna’s length can’t be that good for 433 MHz.
The RTL-SDR 2832 USB dongle has the antenna on a ~1m extension cord - away fron the Raspberry and i guess that makes some difference.

Chris

6

NorthernMan54
thanks a lot, i’ll try the dev. build and report back how it goes.

Chris

7

Chris,
I’m fairly sure they exist. I see the Skylink, Interlogix Security, several weather stations as well as my own. They seem to create a problem in Homeassistant though because something changes their serial or device number, but I haven’t had time to look into this further.
Dave

8

Hi Chris,

I have 3 LilyGo boards.

Had problems with 1.5.1 release, some as yours, very very bad reception.

Change to the latest dev build and have a good reception eversince

Alex

9

Hello everybody,

thanks a lot for you advice!
I’m glad to report after installing version 7df72f the LILYGO LoRa32 board performs really well :slight_smile:
The system is running 2+ weeks now w/o any issues.
The non-existing Skylink motion detectors are gone and the board receives all except one sensors which the Raspberry/SDR RTL-433 system is receiving.

Chris

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