We’re greatly interested in making Link.One work with a UART-based sensor. As has been discussed on this forum (see e.g. topic 1 and topic 2), the only accessible UART port on the Link.One base board (RAK19007) is occupied by the BG77 modem.
I had an idea to use the RAK19010 board inside Link.One instead but it needs to be paired with e.g. RAK19012 and that makes it longer than RAK19007, so it won’t fit inside the Unify Enclosure. RAK19010 fits but RAK19010 + RAK19012 doesn’t fit.
My question is, can we power RAK19010 from a LiPo battery without RAK19012 (or 19013…19017)? Is there an alternative? It could be a DYI solution.
Why use a RAK19012 and RAK19010?
The RAK19012 has USB, solar and battery connector, it makes the RAK19010 the same as a RAK19007 (has USB, solar and battery connector), just longer.
You could just use the RAK19007 and it will fit into the Unify Enclosure.
@beegee there’s the SWD interface on RAK4631 which can be used e.g. with RAKDAP1. It powers the chip with 3.3V of power but it’s recommended to use it in addition to a battery. I tried it without battery and RAKDAP1 alone was not enough to power the BG77 modem.
However, what if we used a 3.7V LiPo battery and a 3.3V Buck Converter like this one from Adafruit, connected to the SWD interface directly on the RAK4631 chip? Wouldn’t it deliver enough power?
This sounds simple and cheap enough that I’ll eventually try it out. As this is a hobby project, it will take a few weeks but I’m really curious.
