Peter | Nov. 23, 2022

Hiroshi | Dec. 8, 2020

It is a great product!

For Grasshopper LoRaWAN Development Board

I purchased Grasshopper and Cricket for Prototype Project.
I think it's an inexpensive and good quality product.

I would like to save average current as described by "Grasshopper power usage".
However, this has not been possible.

In the article, the CPU clock speed is reduced to 32MHz, 16MHz and 4MHz to reduce the average current uses.
But I don't understand how to reduce the clock speed.

How should I program it?

and I have one more question.

This is not the low current expected in the Arduino sample sketch "LoRaWAN_DeepSleep".
It uses about 4mA in Deep Sleep. What is missing to make the current used to be μA?

Response from Tlera Corp | Dec. 9, 2020

Hi Hiroshi,

The clock speed is chosen in the Arduino IDE tools menu before flashing. There is also a dynamic way to change the clock speed while running a program.

Not sure why you are having trouble getting low current when the Grasshopper is in STOP mode. I usually measure 2.1 uA when I disable the power on led or ~300 uA when I don't.. I am not sure how you could be getting 4 mA. Are you measuring current with the USB connected? In this case, the Grasshopper will never enter STOP mode.

Please e-mail me at tleracorp.gmail.com so we can figure out what the problem is.

Kris

Andrew | May 30, 2020

Great little product!

For Grasshopper LoRaWAN Development Board

Love this little product, nice build quality, great libraries, documentation is solid given that it's all open source. Shipping was super fast, I think I got the tracking number the day I placed the order. Setting up and using the device was about as easy as any arduino product. The reliable range with default settings, in dense urban environment, with chip antennas was about 1000 ft / 300M. Line of site easily greater than 1/2 mi / 1.6km. Excellent product!

Quick question for you, to use the u.fl antenna connector instead of the chip antenna, do I need to cut the connection to the chip antenna? Or just attach a connector?

Response from Tlera Corp | May 30, 2020

Thanks for the detailed review and kind words.

For testing you may simply connect an external antenna. If you want to use the external antenna in the field or permanently attach it you can remove the 0 Ohm jumper resistor connecting the RF trace to the chip antenna (small black passive in line with the RF trace) and disconnect the on-board chip antenna without damaging anything. If you ever want to return to chip antenna use, just solder on another 0 Ohm jumper.

I wonder if the range might be increased if you take advantage of the higher output power available? Something hard for us to test accurately.

Keith | Dec. 16, 2019

Works Perfectly

For Grasshopper LoRaWAN Development Board

I purchased two Grasshopper boards to prototype a LoRaWAN product I am working on using MachineQ gateways.

The build quality is excellent, and the boards arrived quickly and well-packaged. I used the example software to connect to MachineQ without any issues. The Prototype is going to require some modifications, so having the schematic and board layout available is very helpful. The complete LoRaWAN library is taking up about a third of the flash and about a quarter of the dynamic memory in the STM32L0, so there is plenty of room for my code.

I'm using an in-door MachineQ gateway, and getting a range of at least a half-mile through other buildings and into my car. This is really good range, especially for a broadband chip-and-trace antenna. The micro-fl connector will allow me to add a better antenna for better range, but I have not tried this yet because I really don't need it. A half-mile in an urban environment is great.

I had a couple of questions, and Kris (onehorse) answered them quickly and courteously.

If you need a small, pretty much bullet-proof, and well-documented LoRaWAN solution, this is it.

Response from Tlera Corp | Dec. 16, 2019

Thanks for the nice review Keith!

Glad to know the one-size-fits-all chip antenna is working so well. I have never done any kind of serious range testing but anecdotal reports such as this make me believe the useful range for most applications would be in the hundreds of meters.

Amir | Aug. 14, 2019

Mike | July 5, 2019

Alberto | March 8, 2019

Alberto | March 8, 2019

Julien | Jan. 26, 2019

Stig | Oct. 26, 2018

Great and compact unit

For Cricket LoRa/LoRaWAN/GNSS Asset Tracker

Great unit! I wanted to use it with the low cost Dragino lg01 gateway. The lg01 is a single channel gw and hence not completely lorawan compatible. The Cricket is fully lorawan compatible, but by turning of all channels except one it works great also with a low cost gw like the dragino. The GPS and sensors works great also.

Response from Tlera Corp | Oct. 26, 2018

Easier way is to use LoRa in FSK/GFSK mode or just the LoRa Radio. Examples are provided.

Ian | Oct. 16, 2018

Excellent product well thought out, works great.

For LoRaSensorTile

These things are a great head start to getting a custom remote sensor going. Low power, good options for onboard devices. Only comments are if running off 3xaa cells for a long term remote it will flood the supply adc input (as documented it only goes to 4.2v). Also the Accelerometer is on by default and draws around 130uA or so. It needs to be switched off in software if not being used to achieve the best results.

Overall very happy with these devices, will buy more for sure.

Response from Tlera Corp | Oct. 16, 2018

Thanks for the kind words Ian!

I am glad you found this device useful.

You are right the device was designed for use with a LiPo battery. But you might try one of those 3.6 V 2600 mAH LiSO2Cl batteries instead of three AA. You might get about the same up time and you can still monitor the full range of battery voltage.

Arthur | March 6, 2018

Up to 320k SRAM, 1MB flash in a low power package!

For Dragonfly STM32L476/96 Development Board

This neat little board packs in 40 times the SRAM of a mega2560, and 4 times the flash memory, with faster clock speed AND lower power consumption! Plus an RTC...the list goes on.

Uploading sketches is also very convenient (okay, the first time is less convenient or if you use the USB-less options) but the core and the effort that went to it is impressive.

The speed/power consumption ratio is impressive and it uses about half the current that a Teensy uses. The sleep modes are fully implemented, so I quickly managed to bring my board down to 0.2mA power consumption with some peripherals. It can go even lower but 2 months of battery life on a tiny 130mAh cell is plenty enough for me :)

Documentation is still a work in progress, but the creators are very responsive and helpful. I've bought several more boards and looking forward to contributing documentation and bug fixes. Looking forward to their future boards as well!

Response from Tlera Corp | March 25, 2018

Thanks for the kind works Arthur!

The stop current on Dragonfly should be closer to 2 uA, so there is a lot that can still be done to improve battery life.

We're still working on improving the system layer and Arduino wrapper and, of course, documentation can always be improved!

Cameron | June 4, 2017

The Butterfly is a great board with Arduino compatibility

For Butterfly STM32L433 Development Board

I received my Butterfly development board just today, after ordering it Thursday. I was surprised how quick it shipped. I have been playing with it all day and I see that the board would be great for prototyping circuits that require an ARM MCU before actually designing and manufacturing the PCB. There are tons of add-ons for it and I am excited to try out the SPI flash and GPS in the future. After looking through the Arduino board files I have found lots of methods which can put it to sleep or in lower power modes. I would really appreciate it if there was some documentation for such things. Although, Kris is great at communication because he answered my questions about the Butterfly way faster than I expected. Thank you for such a great board and please keep making more like this in the future!

Response from Tlera Corp | June 4, 2017

Thanks for the detailed review Cameron. Yes we are behind in full documentation. We are working to extend the STM32 family (adding the L452 and L496 MCUs as well as L052 and L082) and peripherals (nRF52 add-ons and SX1276 LoRa radio, etc) so we have only been able to push examples of method usage to our github repository in the form of sketches. There is a nice discussion of ultra-low-power sensor data logging here: https://github.com/kriswiner/Ladybug/tree/master/BME280_VEML6040 which shows how to use the STM32.stop() method. Other examples will be forthcoming, but for now this is the method I use and would recommend.

Michael | Jan. 28, 2017

John | Jan. 17, 2017