Due to the increasing popularity of Internet of Things and Lora; Arduino LoRa has step up the game with the MKR WAN family to target the IoT market. The MKR WAN 1300 is a powerful board that combines the usability, feasibility, portability and LoRa connectivity in one solid compact Arduino board. Therefore, this model comes with different connectivity ranging from Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and Lora. Seems like, compact and portability of this board is a close competitor of the ESP family which is very popular amount the Internet of Things ecosystem.
At a Glace
- The board can to be powered by AA batteries or external 5V source
- 12 PWM Pins (0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 10, A3 – or 18 -, A4 -or 19)
- 1x UART, 1x SPI, 1x I2C
- 7 Analogs Input Pins
- 1 Analog Output Pin
- 8 External Interrups
- 256Kb Flash Mem
- 32Kb SRAM
- 433/868/915 MHz Bands
Most noteworthy, this is a very low entry end node to get started with LoRa. Probably one of the cheapest in the market right now. Consequently, the MRW requires a gateway to forward end nodes RF packets to the cloud. See a list of Compatible LoRa Gateways.
Furthermore, this board is open-source and schematics for customization is available on Arduino website. In addition to schematics, a variety of example codes are available to get the ground running. Here’s an example of the MKR WAN 1300 that allows you to setup your board to use with a LoRa network.
Where to Buy?
- DigiKey ($40.99)