SB Components is crowdfunding a $31-and-up “LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi” with a 5-Km range at 868MHz or 433MHz. There is also a $47 “LoRa Expansion for Pico” board with a pre-soldered RPi Pico. Raspberry Pi milliner SB Components, which is behind such RPi HATs as the PiFinger fingerprint sensor HAT, has won Kickstarter funding for a simple, low-cost LoRa communications HAT. The LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi is still available in a super early bird special for 23 UK Pounds ($31), as well as an identical 30-Pound ($40) package discounted from the eventual 40-Pound retail price. LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi (click images to enlarge) The campaign also offers a $47 LoRa Expansion for Pico product with a built-in Raspberry Pi Pico MCU module. This is defined as an “add-on” in the sense that you could presumably use it to communicate with the LoRa Expansion for Pico and vice versa.

Shipments are due in February for all the packages. After the campaign ends, SB Components will survey contributors for preferences between 868MHz or 433MHz.

The LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi incorporates Ebyte’s E22-900T22S (850 to 930MHz) with a Semtech SX1262 or the E22-400T22S (410 to 493MHz) with an SX1268. These LoRa modems support up to 5-Km range with 22dBM power.

The LoRa HAT offers a 74HC125V voltage level translator and has a UART communication interface. Features include auto repeating, wireless parameter config support, fixed-point transmission, and SMA and IPEX antenna connectors.

You can evaluate signal quality with the RSSI, and there are wake-on-radio and deep sleep modes. Other features include serial/USB jumpers, data/command mode jumpers, and 3x LEDs.

The HAT includes a 40-pin GPIO connector. The video shows a stacked configuration along with SB Components’ PiRelay 6, which is the 6-relay sibling to its 8-relay PiRelay 8 add-on. LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi pinout (left) and LoRa Expansion for Pico (click images to enlarge) The “LoRa Expansion for Pico” board incorporates a soldered RPi Pico board and adds a 1.14-inch LCD display. The board supports 5-Km LoRa communications at 868/433MHz.

Other LoRa HATs include Seeed’s higher-end, and currently out of stock WM1302 Raspberry Pi HAT, which sells for $109.80 with a pre-installed Semtech SX1302 based WM1302 LoRaWAN Gateway Module. The product offers 125 kHz LoRa reception with up to -139 dBm sensitivity and integrates a GPS chip. Other Pi-based LoRaWAN gateways include the $99-and-up, RPi Zero W based RAK7246 LoRAWAN Developer Gateway and $212-and-up, RPI 4-based RAK7244 LoRaWAN Developer Gateway, both from RAK Wireless.

The LoRa HAT for Raspberry Pi is available on Kickstarter through Jan 3, 2022, starting at 23 UK Pounds ($31), with shipments due in February. More information may be found on SB Components’ Kickstarter page.