Embedded and hobbyist electronics specialist Seeed Studio has announced what it claims is “the smallest LoRa dev kit in the world,” targeting those looking to experiment with the Meshtastic mesh networking project in a compact and low-cost package: the XIAO ESP32S3 for Meshtastic & LoRa bundle.
“Sized as small as your thumb, and priced at only $9.90, it‘s the smallest dev kit for prototyping your first Meshtastic and LoRa/LoRaWAN projects,” claims Seeed’s Zero Zhang of the company’s latest launch. “Pre-flashed with Meshtastic firmware, it is ready to work once powered on. [It] can be developed as a Meshtastic node or router, a single-channel LoRaWAN gateway, or a LoRa & LoRaWAN sensor.”
The XIAO ESP32S3 for Meshtastic & LoRa is now available to pre-order on the Seeed store, ahead of late-November shipping, at just $9.90 including the XIAO ESP32S3, Wio-SX1262, and flexible antennas for both radios.
The headline news is that SeeedStudio now have a Xioa form-factor LoRa board with a SX1262 at a good price.
The bundle here pairs it with their existing ESP32-C3 Xiao board; this has charging on-board, and the C3 is a lower power part than the rest of the ESP32 line.
For the money it looks like a really good deal, especially for sensor nodes etc.
disclaimer; I’m a Xiao fanboy and already own multiple boards…
The LoRa board can also be paired with the other Xiao boards, ESP32-S3, RP2040 and nrf52840. The latter is interesting since it is ultra low power, has a charger circuit, no WiFi but BT5 and NFC!.
That thing does look quite good. Finally a better LDO than this awful AMS1117.
With Wifi/BLE disabled and “Power Saving” enable you should be able to run it with <=7mAh in Light Sleep (of which the half will be consumed by LoRa RX).