Electronica: Building automation mesh network over LoRa

NeoCortec and Embit revealed bi-directional wireless mesh networking using LoRa modulation at Electronica in Munich yesterday.

“The various wireless connectivity technologies all exist because they all address different challenges,” said NeoCortec CEO Thomas Steen Halkier. “We expect this development to unlock many wireless networking opportunities in smart buildings and other applications.”

NeoCortec contribution here is a proprietary protocol stack for a network that it brands ‘NeoMesh’ that it claims “is dynamic and scalable, supporting thousands of nodes, requiring only one gateway and no repeaters. [It] is able to automatically reroute signals, self-healing in the event of a node failure”.

Read our full Electronica 2024 coverage »

Embit’s contribution is EMB-LR1280S, a new LoRa wireless module based on Semtech’s SX1280 2.4GHz long range transceiver and an STM32L073 microcontroller – in this case running NeoCortec’s stack and “compliant with worldwide 2.4GHz frequency band regulations and able to be used anywhere in the world”, according to NeoCortec.

“We are delighted to be able to unveil the first commercially-available module to feature both LoRa and NeoMesh technology at Electronica,” said Embit CEO Fabio Bonizzi.

The module has up to 192kbyte of flash, up to 20kbyte of ram and a crypto unit to protect the communication between the module and external interfaces.

Find the hardware on this web page and the protocol here