About the availability of different Lora chips manufacturers

1

Hello.

I’m interested in Lora/LoraWan technologies but it seems there are very few Lora chip producers. In fact, I only know Semtech (with its SX1272 and SX1276 chips) and Microchip (with its RN2483 and RN2903 chips). I know there is the Lora Alliance, which promotes the open use or Lora technologie but…is Lora really open?? I mean…why there’s no more Lora hardware suppliers? Maybe protocol is open but manufacturers must pay some kind of royalties to make the chips?? Why the cercled “R” behind “Lora” and the TM behind “LoraWan”?? Is Lora to Semtech the same as XBee is to Digi??

I ask these questions because I would like to begin a infrastructure without being tied to any company. If Lora is really only viable using chips from one or two manufacturers, it isn’t really “standard” nor open. I would like to be clarified on this issue before beginning to work.

Thanks a lot.

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Well, there is hopeRF (http://www.hoperf.com/rf_transceiver/lora/) too.
Three manufacturers, then.

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And Dorji, and several others if you search well. But indeed the Lora modulation is a proprietary RF modulation “invented” by Semtech, and indeed the chip manufacturers pay royalties to Semtech (AFAIK). This is not very uncommon in this industry.

Still a lot of people over here believe it is a great technology and it fills a gap in the current IoT market place. I would describe the gap as a low power long range RF solution providing a standardized way to interface with “the Internet”. If you know about technologies that do this as well as LoRa does, please let us know :blush:.

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The Microchip RN2483 is not a chip but a module containing a PIC controller and the Semtech chip + RF filtering.

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cheap chinese modules online :sunglasses:

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Thanks a lot for your answers.

P.S: It seems that these chinese modules are based (again) on Semtech’s SX1276 chip…

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That happens more often. Z-Wave (a popular, different wireless technology) devices are built on Zensys chips, yet there are a great many companies competing with similar devices. So don’t worry

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Hi q2dg, do you ever use ARM core microcontrollers? One company driving an ecosystem, with all chip suppliers paying royalties to manufacture. Seems to be OK for a lot of engineers.

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Mmm…yes, you’re true.

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ST, which - as you probably know - is a huge chip manufacturer already confirmed plans to integrate LoRa into their own microprocessors (namely their ARM-based STM32 range)

http://www.st.com/web/en/press/c2790

“ST plans to develop microcontrollers with on-chip LoRa technology that supports the LoRaWAN™ standardized protocol”

– Jose

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How do you get this kind of information? I mean, how can I know the chip I bought is based on SX1276 or SX1272, by comparing their datasheets?

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All manufacturers should have this information in the datasheet of block diagram of their products. It’s not a chip you buy, it’s a product containing at least the Semtech SX127x chip.

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Microchip is finalizing the release of a SoC with (former Atmel) SAM Cortex-M4 and integrated LoRa transceiver, maybe before 2018.

next will be ST

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In my case, the datasheet does not contain this information then. I’m trying to use a HM-TRLR/HFS which contains a RF96 chip, but I assumed this chip was based on a SX127x one…

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Ah yes, HopeRF tries to obscure which Semtech silicon they use. I think it’s to give their Chinese copycat colleagues some more figuring out to do?

The RFM96 uses a SX1231. See this thread for some more info.

The HM-TRLR/HFS is new to me :open_mouth: .

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16

No it is the RFM69 using SX1231. RFM96 uses SX1276

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Thanks @Epyon and @Mirmit. But I couldn’t find any project that used TRLR so I gave up and now I’m using RFM95W :joy: