The first retail release of the unPhone (hardware spin 9) is now available from Pimoroni!
Iām very excited about getting one of these once itās back in stock.
One question though: does the software support LoRA in the 915 MHz band out of the box? The schematics indicate āRFM95W 868MHzā, but the RFM95W is usually tunable in software to either the 868 or the 915 MHz band. Iāve search a bit and found no immediate answer.
The pimo folks have more stock just need to assemble them 
Gareth said this re. the 868/915 question on the meshtastic discord recently: āthe hoperf module RFM95W used on unPhone is dual band, it can do 868MHz or 915MHz. We have a little internal tiny spring-like ariel which is tuned (!) for 868, you might need to replace this to get 915 working wellā¦ā
Iāve had contacts from up to 60 miles away from my top floor room in the last couple of days on 868, so Iād be hopeful that 915 isnāt too dissimilar. (Admittedly I live on a hill!)
Hello eblues and so excited with you for your upcoming unPhone!
So āout of the boxā the unPhone is loaded with a test program that doesnāt really use LoRa much, just verifies the chip is working.
Our libraries include arduino-lmic and arduino-lorawan (both from mcci-catena) to make writing your own code as easy as possible. Those libraries can take a configuration to set the region, we do this mostly in platformio.ini with a line in the build flags like " -D CFG_eu868=1" - you could change this to " -D CFG_us915=1".
Hope that helps - let us know if you need more informationā¦
Kind regards
Gareth
Thanks Gareth and also thank you Hamish for the previous reply.
Changing compile time flags is not a problem.
Tuning the antenna might be. Is there a connector? Can it be replaced? How would I go ahead and tune it? For all practical purposes, you can assume I have no issues with software but I can do hardware hacking only at a kindergarten level.
Iām not an expert on antennas but I have a suspicion that 868 and 915 mhz are close enough to work on the same wire. Otherwise it would be a screwdriver and solder job
Tomorrow Iām posting some units to a dev in the US so should have more definitive feedback when he gets them.
Hth H
Thanks. Iād be interested in the results given Iām essentially looking for a LoRA āHIDā device sort of thing and getting decent range (not quite 60 miles but at least 10-20) would be somewhat essential.
Iāve also asked the Pimoroni folks if they have plans to make a US version with a US antenna. I suspect everybody in the US is going to have a similar question.
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Makes sense! Have a good one
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Iām not a certified grey beard radio ham, but it seems that the 868 and 915MHz spring type PCB antennas are only different by 0.5 mm / 20 thousandsth of an inch.
So pretty confident that Pimoroni will be able to fit the larger aerial into the unPhone!
Yes, I donāt know what Iām talking about when it comes to antennas, but I was sort of assuming that the slightly higher frequency antenna is slightly smaller smaller than the slightly lower frequency one. Assuming a different antenna even makes sense, of course.