I am carrying out a project based on Lora. I currently have the 7240 RAK brand gateway (16 channels) and 7431 RAK brand nodes as well (they are LoRa to Rs485 converters). The devices connected to the node are actuators that use Rs485 communication, that is why the previous node has been used.
These actuators receive a 22-byte wait command for operation, and this data must be updated every 10 seconds.
After different tests, we want to send this information to a total of more than 40 nodes, but with 12 nodes we already have problems and information is lost, since we see that it does not reach all the nodes correctly. Together with the LoRa sending frame we have a frame of the size of 28 bytes (6 from LoRa and 22 from the RS485 equipment).
We know that LoRa technology is preferably intended for sensors, not actuators. In fact, we find that in almost all gateways on the market, the majority of channels are intended for Uplinks and not for Downlinks. LoRa communication was ideal for our project, due to the coverage distance, bit/s transmission and elements necessary for communication.
However, I am running into the problem of information being lost. This are my questions:
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Is LoRaWan really what my project needs?
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Is there a LoRa system designed for actuators and not so much for sensors?
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Are there any gateways with Downlinks priority?
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Is the data size sent by Downlinks too large?
I would greatly appreciate your help