Solar & supercap charged LoRaWAN IoT device

Steps taken:

• Use of Elektor Uno R4 board with small modification to use it as 3.3V MCU with 328PB that has 2 HW USARTs.
• Added reset line to RN2483 to solve instable situations for communication.
• Successful test with use of Serial and Serial1 in Arduino sketch for RN2483 communication and debugging via serial console

Details of progress and next steps in main text of project.

Steps taken:

• Made test setting to test the serial communication and possible use of timer trigger from RN2483.
• Use of logic analyzer to inspect serial traffic between 328P and RN2483 reveiled strange behavior. It randomly seems to work.
• Retesting with another RN2483 and with a Pro Mini 3.3V 8MHz gave same results.
• Ordered the Atmega328PB chip with 2 hardware UARTs and PCB to solder it on to ensure solid communication, this will impact my board setting.

Details of progress and next steps in main text of project.

Additional steps taken:

• Configuring the RN2483 via terminal session in order to save settings in EEPROM of device
• Basic sketch to connect to LoRaWAN network using ABP
• Lots of challenges had to be solved
• First couple of successful LoRaWAN transmissions to KPN's network with the board powered by supercaps only

Details of progress and next steps in main text of project.

Additional steps taken:

• Used timer based blink sketch with IDLE sleep mode to test usability of supercaps
• Uptime without solar panel was 65 minutes with every 8 seconds the LED turned on

Promising for further improvement.

Details of progress and next steps in main text of project.

Additional steps taken:

• Enabled Atmega328P's BOD at 1.8V level to enable usage at 3.3V or lower voltage
• Use of 5V LDO between solar panel and supercaps
• Supercaps in series with 5.4V (only 5V max used) and 5F as result
• Use of 3.3V LDO between solar panel and supercaps
• Test with renewed hardware using a standard blink sketch

Details of progress in main text of project.

Highlight of steps sofar:

• initial hardware setup
• testing with low power settings for ATMega328P
• use of other solar panel and 2 super caps in parallel

Details of progress in main text of project.