$0.00
0

Cart

-50%

CatWAN Arduino Shield

A long-range, open-hardware Arduino shield for LoRa: link two boards directly, or join a LoRaWAN network like The Things Network.

Original price was: $55.00.Current price is: $27.50.

Only 1 left in stock

In the box

CatWAN Arduino Shield board only

Not included

An antenna. Solder a short wire to the board’s antenna pad, or use the optional SMA connector footprint to attach an external antenna instead.

You also need

An Arduino UNO — or a compatible Arduino UNO R4 Minima / Arduino UNO R4 WiFi — board. The shield doesn’t work on its own.

What is the CatWAN Arduino Shield?

The CatWAN Arduino LoRa Shield is a long-range transceiver for Arduino, built on open-source libraries including lmic and RFM95, that sends data over extended distances on low power. It plugs onto an Arduino UNO, UNO R4 Minima, or UNO R4 WiFi board, adding a 900 MHz LoRa radio with a +20 dBm power amplifier and sensitivity better than -148 dBm — up to 2 km line-of-sight with a wire antenna, or up to 20 km with a directional one. There’s no separate firmware to flash: install two Arduino libraries (LoRa, Beelan LoRaWAN) and upload an example sketch from the shield’s own repo. From there it supports two documented setups: a point-to-point link with another Electronic Cats board (BastWAN), or joining a LoRaWAN network like The Things Network via ABP. No antenna is included — solder a short wire to the pad, or add one through the optional SMA footprint.

Point-to-point LoRa link with another Electronic Cats board

You need two boards to exchange data directly over LoRa, with no gateway or network in between. Pair a CatWAN Arduino LoRa Shield (on an Arduino UNO) as the receiver with a BastWAN board as the sender, both running the point-to-point example sketches that ship in the shield’s own repo. The two boards talk directly over a long-range LoRa link.

Joining a LoRaWAN network with The Things Network

You want your Arduino to report data to a real LoRaWAN network, not just to one other board. Install the Beelan LoRaWAN library and run the shield’s LoRaWAN example with ABP Class C activation. The Things Network (TTN) acts as the network/device manager, receiving data from your Arduino UNO plus CatWAN Shield as a LoRaWAN end device.

Prototype a LoRa Sensor Node for Irrigation or Metering

You are prototyping a LoRa sensor network for something like irrigation control, smart metering or building automation. Stack the CatWAN Shield on an Arduino UNO, read your sensor, and send the readings over LoRa to a second Electronic Cats board, or to The Things Network with the shield’s LoRaWAN example. You end up with a working field-node prototype you can test before designing your own board.

Start in 10 minutes

  1. Download and install the Arduino IDE.
  2. Install the “LoRa” library by Sandeep Mistry from the Arduino IDE’s Library Manager (Sketch > Include Library > Manage Libraries > search “LoRa”).
  3. Install the “Beelan LoRaWAN” library by Eduardo Contreras the same way, searching “Beelan”.
  4. Open one of the example sketches in the CatWAN Shield repo under /Examples (LoRa_PHY, LoRa_PHY_RH, or LoRa_WAN) and upload it to your Arduino.
Weight0.030 g
Dimensions18 × 12.5 × 2 cm
Radio module

RFM95W (Semtech SX1276-based)

Frequency band

900 MHz hardware, software-tunable to 868 MHz or 915 MHz

TX power

+20 dBm integrated power amplifier

Receiver sensitivity

Better than -148 dBm

Range

Up to ~2 km line-of-sight (wire antenna); up to ~20 km with a directional antenna

Onboard voltage regulator

3.3V

Logic level support

3V and 5V, via onboard level-shifter

Compatible boards

Arduino UNO R3, Arduino UNO R4 Minima, Arduino UNO R4 WiFi

Hardware license

CERN Open Hardware Licence v1.2

Firmware/example code license

GNU AGPL v3.0

Free shipping to the US on orders +$250 USD · to Mexico on orders +$100 USD