I’m working on a project to tow myself into waves with a drone craft (a modified eFoil board) and I’m trying to decide on the best radio/dev board to use. The distance of separation between transmitter and receiver is not huge and I’ll only be transmitting low rates of data–basically GPS location and an initial “come get me” signal from the beacon the rider carries. I’m considering using Heltec LoRa 32 boards. Are you aware of anything that might be prefereable. I have experience with xBee boards, though not recently. I don’t plan on any commercial aspects, this is just for me, so I prefer to use something as integrated as possible to forestall the need to design a PCB. I note that some of the Heltec boards have connections for a GPS antenna, but I haven’t found any explanation of whether that means all the GPS radio and processing requirements are on the boards. I realize this is a big ask, I’ll share whatever development I do on this project with you, it seems the underlying capability–having a drone of any type navigate to a beacon when called–would be something of interest to Random Nerds.
While I’m at it, I credit you folks with my renewed interest in digital electronics. I’ve built versions of many of your projects, including a wireless MQQT-based control system for the 1978 GMC motorhome I’m restomodding and I enjoy my subscription to RNT a great deal. Your detailed tutorials have made it much easier for me to create systems I can use. Thank you so much.