A LoRa-based Neighborhood Emergency Communications System

Maker Faire Bay Area 2023

October 13th-22nd

Sudden events, such as wildfires or earthquakes inevitably lead to outages in electric power, cell service, VOIP telephones, etc. So when the "big on comes", how will your family be informed to prepare to evacuate or be able to send a call for emergency help? This project comprises a series of outdoor solar powered repeaters and in-home battery-backed up small devices with touch screen color display to receive and send short messages (think SMS) to neighbors and first responders. LoRa is used as the radio communications link among as many as 255 stations. Network management facilities enable administrators to see who is connected (or not), check battery voltages, ambient temperature, etc. as well as performing remote OTA software updates to those devices that also are WiFi connected.