It’s not hard to find a LoRa GPS tracker board such as Rak Wireless RAK811 these days, but if for some reasons, you’d also like your board to comply with 96Boards IoT Edition form factor, Rak Wireless just launched Wistrio LoRa Tracker RK5205 for $49.50 plus shipping on Aliexpress and Amazon.
Wistrio specifications:
- LoRa Module – RAK5205 module with SX1276 LoRa chipset, STM32L1 Arm Cortex-M3 microcontroller
- LoRa Connectivity
- LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol
- OTAA/ABP activation
- Programmable bitrate up to 300 Kbps
- Support for global bands: EU433, CN470, EU868, US915, AS923, AU915, KR920, and IN865
- SMA & iPEX antenna options
- Location – Quectel L76-L GNNS chip supporting GPS, GLONASS, Galileo and QZSS system (pin-to-pin compatible with u-blox Max7)
- Sensors – LIS3DH 3-axis accelerometer, BME680 environmental sensor reporting gas, pressure, humidity and temperature data
- Expansion Header – I2C, GPIOs, UART and ADC
- Power Supply – Rechargeable battery via micro USB port, or 5V solar charging port
- Power Consumption / Low power modes – 16uA (sleep mode), support GPS Power-off mode, MCU & Sensor Support sleep mode
- Dimensions – 60 x 30 x 11.45 mm (96Boards IoT Edition)
Documentation is available on both 96Boards and Rak Wireless websites . The recommended programming method is basically the same as RAK811 using CooCox IDE in Windows.
The form factor is not the only difference compared to the company’s existing RAK811 GPS tracker board, and Wistrio board has several advantages as shown in the table below.
| Wistrio | RAK811 | |
| Power Consumption | 16uA (sleep mode) | 200uA (minimum) |
| Support GPS Power-off mode | No low power GPS mode | |
| MCU & Sensor Support sleep mode | The firmware does not support sleep mode | |
| Interface | I2C, GPIOs, UART & ADC | No I/O interfaces |
| Dimension | 60 x 30 x 11.45 mm | 55 x 22 x 17 mm |
| Band | Support Global Multiple Bands | Not support for 433MHz/470MHz |
| Sensors | LIS3DH & BME680 | none |
| Antenna Option | SMA & iPEX can be switched | only SMA antenna |
Wistrio LoRA Trackr 5205 will ship with GPS and LoRa antennas, and a micro USB cable. The company also informed me they are working on an enclosure for the board that will be sold separately.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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Does the battery charger actually work on this version?