We’ve a need for long distance sensors (e.g. contact sensors for gates). We’ve tried Zigbee but the distance is too far, and wifi uses too much battery power.
I’m just learning about LORA and so am unsure how to progress. Located in UK so would need to be that applicable frequency.
Is it sufficient to get a LORA development board (e.g. TTGO’s or Waveshares SX1262 LoRa HAT) to be used as a gateway for either multiple DIY sensors (same/similar LORA board connected to battery and contact) or multiple commercial sensors?
Or is a (commerical?) LORA gateway device needed that then communicates with HA using MQTT? Do those gateways only allow their own brand sensors?
Is there something that needs to ‘decode’ the LORA information or is it raw?
If anyone has a similar working set up, be most helpful to hear about it.
There are a couple of different LoRa types: plain LoRa, and LoRaWAN, and the HA Community uses both kinds.
I myself have only used plain LoRa for my DIY projects. I use OpenMQTT Gateway to receive LoRa signals from the remote Sensors and the MQTT part works with HA. You should be able to find on the OpenMQTTGateway site a compatible LoRa receiver that runs OpenMQTTGateway software. Also check that the receiver can be bought for U.K. frequencies which I understand would be 868MHz (maybe 433MHz as well) but double check to be sure.
As for your particular application, here is a LoRa mailbox sensor, that has a version with magnetic contact closures that I would think you could use for a gate open/close sensor. I have used his original mailbox sensor that was based on a motion sensor, but have not used his more recent versions, but I think they should work for you. You should be able to set the power level to around +20dBm to get much better distance than ZigBee.
Here are a couple of other references you can use to research further: