Waveshare Core1262 HF LoRa Module, SX1262 Chip, Meshtastic Devices,Long-Range Communication, Anti-Interference, Suitable for Sub-GHz Band

I absolutely love these modules. I've bought 10 of them by now. Lots of arduino libraries and footprints online for implementing onto a pcb. Haven't had any issues with them and the output the full 22dbm at the advertised frequency range (checked with spectrum analyzer)

I've been programming microcontrollers forever, but the Waveshare Core1262 HF LoRa Module is my first foray into LoRa. Honestly, it's easier to use than BLE and WiFi modules, and the libraries are pretty mature. I was able to use this with a RPi and with an ESP32 with no issues. The $15 price (with 5% off coupon, at the time of this review) isn't exactly cheap, but it's also not out of line for other RF modules, either. The range is impressive, as is the ability for 900MHz to pass through obstructions. Recommended

I resorted to using the SX1262 Datasheet to attempt to write my own driver to get this working with a Radxa Zero 3W, with nothing to show for it. The only example code is for a raspberry pi pico, and I never tested to see if even that worked, as I don't have a pico on hand. This was the linchpin for my senior design project, and it failed me, despite it being a simple SPI device in nature. Its like they just followed the reference design from the data sheet, slapped some shielding on it, and called it a day. I would be fine with this if they just wrote a functional driver which worked with standard C/C++ libraries, but that would be too difficult I guess.

This is a no-frills module without header pins or built-in antenna. It's very compact and easy to integrate into a small project. I used it with an ESP32C3 for an environmental monitor, and it seems to work pretty well, offering good performance over ranges up to several hundred meters between nodes, with only a small external antenna. If you're looking for something for prototyping or experimentation, maybe look for one that comes with some accessories, but this one is tiny, effective and a good value for what it is.

Very poor software support. Trying to get this work with RadioLib was problematic and, unfortunately, unsuccessful. Trying to get more information about the internal components, in order to get the RadioLib working, rendered to be unsuccessful as well. I may revisit it later. Buy only if you're aware what you're doing.

Postage stamp sized chip is incredibly easy to incorporate into any project. I am planning to make use of it building out a capibara zero with a few other items i am waiting on. On its own i did struggle a bit to find a library that would work, documentation took my down a raspberry pi zero installation but i don't have access to one to follow step by step with the guide. Probably a bit self inflicted and likely just spinning up an Arduino IDE would have been much easier to get all setup. (and i lack a second unit to setup a TX/RX demo anyway) Waveshare's documentation is always excellent but i do wish there was a more basic example to follow along with for us fairly new tinkerers. There is demo code and examples to point you in the right direction but i haven't had the time to go through it properly to get setup. Its just nice to have a braindead simple satisfying verification that this works and you can go on from there to tinker. However, this is does hit a nice price point to piggy back on to another project giving the versatility of LoRa to your projects and will likely end up picking up another set of devices from wave share to build it out. In the meantime i am excited to setup a little capibara zero to mess with as that project looks like a lot of fun!

LoRa is a bit of a pain. I have equipment from 3 different manufacturers, with antennas tuned to 3 different wavelengths, and interoperability has been a consistent annoyance. I wasn't able to communicate between this "Core1262 HF" with an "SX1262" chip and some ESP microcontrollers with "SX1262" LoRa modules. I tried driving this chip using a PIC16 that does SPI on peripheral hardware. The effort to debug exceeded my interest in getting it working at this point. For what it's worth, the waveshare wiki page for the product had clear documenation. I really need to get a good SDR signal analyzer/logger because I'm constantly dealing with problems at work that would be easier to troubleshoot with one. I'm not sure at this point if it was a software or hardware limitation, but the SPI communication with this chip worked so it's likely an issue with the aligning the two different libraries from two different microcontrollers written in two different languages, or an issue with the antenna I tried using.