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Comment by gh02t | Hacker News Reader

LoRa isn't really a consumer protocol, more of an industrial one. It's mostly intended for widely distributed sensor networks.

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Actually LoRa is not a protocol but physical layer, way of modulating RF. LoRaWAN is probably that consumer protocol which you refer to. There is also Symphony Link protocol (proprietary).

And I wouldn't use LoRaWAN protocol in industrial application, because you have limited way of ACKing every message (more like UDP for sending sensor data rather than TCP), no option for OTA, and Symphony Link claims to have it, so that I would call it more industrial.

Correct, I was hand waving over the distinction but I suppose it's important. LoRa itself is the radio layer. I still think of it as something targeting industrial use cases, though there have been some neat hobbyist projects using it.

So UDP isn't industry-ready yet either then?

Wasn't it designed for sending sensor data from oil wells spread out over vast swaths of land or something? I've always though of it as shortwave/vhf for packets

Started out being used for satellite communication between satellites. It's point to point nature and multiple frequency legs itself to sensor networks over extended distance or in dense areas like cities.

Maybe i'm thinking zigbee?

Zigbee has always (or at least, for a long time) targeted a mixture of consumer and industrial applications and is focused on relatively short range mesh networks. It does have a lot of consumer uses now, it's one of the big protocols used for home automation. Not sure of the exact history of LoRa, but widely distributed oil well sensors would definitely fit the intended use of LoRa. Agriculture is another good use case.

Low power sensors infrequently reporting (mostly one-way) small amounts of data back to a base station over really long distances is what it was originally designed for, though people have done other stuff with it. Zigbee is all about the meshing AFAIU.

Zigbee has a serial bus mode that's identical to RS-485 in practice. There were/are so many industrial applications of RS-485 that they could instantly convert to wireless mesh with a zigbee daughter board or chipset. 'Pro' versions had ~1.5 mile range between nodes.

I think Amazon Sidewalk (included w/ every Alexa now) is built on top of LoRa

It looks like they added LoRa to the most recent Ring Bridge[1], but most older Sidewalk devices do their connecting over wifi. Seems likely other new ones will do both.

1: https://fccid.io/2AEUPBHARB001/RF-Exposure-Info/RF-Exposure-...

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