Soil sensors + LoRa in an orchard: one hill is killing the link. What's the alternative for terrain-proof telemetry?
I'm building a soil moisture sensor for my dad's orchard — a few STM32 nodes scattered around, battery powered, meant to run for months without attention. I designed the data pipeline around LoRa because the range looked good on paper.
Actual testing has been frustrating. There's a low hill between two of the nodes and the gateway, and the LoRa signal just dies in that gap. I've tried repositioning the gateway twice and it's still a problem.
The data I'm sending is tiny — temperature, moisture, battery voltage, maybe 20 bytes per reading, once every few hours. I'm not looking for high throughput. I just need something reliable that doesn't care about terrain.
Has anyone switched from LoRa to something else for genuinely remote outdoor nodes? What were the tradeoffs?