LILYGO T-Halow is an ESP32-S3 board with long-range WiFi HaLow, OV2640/OV5640 camera support

LILYGO T-Halow is an ESP32-S3 board equipped with a WiFi HaLow module with up to 1.2km range, a connector compatible with OV2640 and OV5640 camera modules, and an 18650 battery holder for power, as well as several GPIOs for expansion.

We first wrote about 802.11ah low-power long-range WiFi standard operating at 900 MHz in 2014, but adoption has been slow and we’ve seen a few 802.11ah (WiFi HaLow) chips from Newracom and Morse Micro over the years, as well as USB adapters, a Raspberry Pi HAT, a mini PCIe card, gateways, and some development boards. All those rely on a Linux host, but the LILYGO T-Halow features a TX-AH WiFI HaLow module from Taixin Semiconductor that’s controller by AT commands through an ESP32-S3 or a micro USB port.

LILYGO T-Halow specifications:

• Wireless modules
  • ESP32-S3-WROOM-1 wireless module
    • SoC –  ESP32-S3 dual-core Tensilica LX7 microcontroller @ up to 240 MHz with
      • 2.4 GHz 802.11n WiFi 4 and Bluetooth 5.0 LE connectivity
      • Memory – 8MB PSRAM
      • Storage – 16MB SPI flash
    • PCB antenna
  • TaiXin Semiconductor TX-AH module
    • 802.11ah HaLow compliant
    • Frequency Bands
      • 859-894MHz (875M Saw) OR
      • 902-928MHz (915M Saw)
    • Channel width – 1/2/4/8MHz
    • Throughput – 150 Kbps to 32.5Mbps
    • Range – Up to 1.2 km range (Line of Sight)
    • IPEX antenna connector
• Storage
  • MicroSD card slot
  • Removable NOR Flash for TX-AH/Ethernet firmware
• Camera I/F – FPC connector compatible with 2M OV2640 or 5M OV5640 camera modules
• Connectivity
  • Ethernet RJ45 port
  • 2.4 GHz WiFi 4 (802.11b/g/n)
  • Bluetooth 5.x
  • WiFi HaLow
• USB
  • Micro USB port for AT commands
  • USB-C port for charging and programming the ESP32-S3 module
• Expansion – 2x 16-pin headers with up to 24x GPIO, 2x UART, touch interfaces, 8x ADC, 5V, 3.3V, VBAT, GND
• Misc – On/Off switch
• Power Supply
  • 5V via USB-C port for charging
  • 18650 battery holder; ADC pin for battery level monitoring
• Dimensions – 113 x 33 x 29 (H) mm

Two modes of operations are available for the T-Halow:

• MODE1 – Send AT command control to TX-AH via ESP32
  • TX-AH: huge-ic-ah_v1.6.3.5-25403_2023.10.20_TAIXIN-usb.bin firmware
  • ESP32 with AP or STA firmware
• MODE2 – Send AT command control via micro USB (The diagram below shows the PC connected over RJ45 instead…)
  • TX-AH: huge-ic-ah_v1.6.3.3-26347_2023.11.29_TAIXIN-WNB.bin firmware
  • ESP32: No firmware is required

Flashing the TX-AH firmware on the SPI NOR flash requires an SFLY SP10B programmer with an SOP8 adapter and FlyPRO II software available for Windows 32-bit/64-bit only. Once the firmware is programmed, you’d need to put the Winbond SPI flash back in place as shown in the photo below.

The complete instructions, firmware files, schematics, Arduino code samples for a camera server, microSD card, AP and STA mode, and factory testing can all be found on GitHub. While WiFi HaLow was first introduced as another LPWAN standard, it’s mainly beneficial for higher bitrate solutions such as connected cameras, and the T-HaLow looks like an interesting and flexible platform for this purpose, albeit cumbersome to use based on the documentation…

LILYGO sells the T-Halow ESP32-S3 board for $37.98 on AliExpress, and you’d need to select the 859-894MHz or 902-928MHz variants based on your local regulations. It should be like LoRa with ~875 MHz for Europe and India, and ~915 MHz for the US, Southeast Asia, Korea, etc… The board is also listed on Amazon, but currently out of stock.

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