STM32WL55 on Antony Mapfumo

921 Metres Through Suburban Brisbane with a LoRaWAN Node — Here's What the Data Showed.

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:23:09 +1000

The Setup

I built a two-node LoRaWAN sensor network on STM32WL55JC1 microcontrollers running Rust/Embassy firmware — the full story is in Part 1. One of the two nodes, lora-2, carries no sensor. Its only job is to send a confirmed uplink every ~10 seconds, display RSSI, SNR, and DR on its OLED, and let the gateway’s InfluxDB record tell the story later.

You might wonder why I didn’t just use lora-1 — the sensor node — for this test. Both nodes send a 4-byte payload, so packet size is identical and makes no difference to range. What matters is transmission behaviour: lora-2 sends every uplink confirmed, so a missed ACK is detected within one cycle. lora-1 only confirms every fifth uplink, meaning gateway loss takes much longer to register. lora-2 also transmits every ~10 seconds versus lora-1’s ~30 seconds — three times the data points in InfluxDB, three times the resolution when overlaying against GPS waypoints later. Purpose-built beats repurposed.

Building a LoRaWAN Sensor Network in Rust — STM32WL55, Embassy, and the Bugs That Taught Me the Most

Tue, 28 Apr 2026 12:21:14 +1000

From Sensor to Dashboard — Without a Line of C

My previous projects used the STM32F446RE — a capable workhorse, but one that needs an external LoRa radio module wired up separately. When I decided to go deep on LoRaWAN, I wanted a chip where the radio was part of the silicon itself. The STM32WL55JC1 delivers exactly that: an ARM Cortex-M4 application processor and a sub-GHz radio coexisting on the same die, talking to each other over an internal SPI bus that never leaves the package.

Building a Multi-Protocol Industrial IoT Gateway: LoRaWAN, Modbus TCP, and BACnet/IP

Sun, 01 Feb 2026 17:01:44 +1000

When industrial facilities need to monitor equipment and environmental conditions, they often face a challenge: different systems speak different languages. A temperature sensor in one part of the building might use Modbus TCP, while the HVAC system uses BACnet/IP, and wireless sensors communicate via LoRaWAN. Getting all this data into one place typically requires expensive proprietary gateways or complex integration projects.

I built a solution that brings these three protocols together on a single platform, using open-source tools and commodity hardware.