Hardware Podcasts

An Interview with Felix Rusu

The Amp Hour · 9 Jul 2018 · 1h 24m · Episode 398

What this episode covers

Felix Rusu of Low Power Lab explains how he built a home automation ecosystem using sub-gigahertz radios and low-power microcontrollers to avoid the range and power limitations of 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi. He details the design of the Motino board, which uses an ATmega328P and custom libraries to manage RFM69 modules, enabling features like automatic transmit power control and wireless firmware updates via external flash. Rusu discusses the trade-offs between RFM69 and LoRa, emphasizing that for most residential applications, RFM69 offers sufficient range with lower complexity and cost, while highlighting the importance of keeping data local on a Raspberry Pi gateway rather than relying on the cloud.

Most relevant to

early-stage companies

Topics

Mentioned

Companies
Low Power Lab, Hope RF, Semtech, Silicon Labs
Products
Motino, LoRa, Raspberry Pi, Arduino, MotionMote, GarageMote
Chips
RFM69, RFM12B, ATmega328P

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