It's been a while since I last wrote a phlog entry. Winter has come 
and sort-of gone and I've been busily involved with small projects. 
The most exciting has been my foray into the Internet of Things, using 
Lora nodes and gateways. Suffice to say that it you visit 
https://thethingsnetwork.org it will all make sense. 

I rarely undertake a project unless it's (very) affordable, and the 
Lora stuff has been no exception. For the nodes, I'm currently using a 
couple of BBC Micro:bit devices coupled to a Pi-Supply Lora Node 
"hat". Despite their price, the 'bits are extremely reliable, and 
coupled to the node hats are working 24/7 in a *very* hrash 
environment: out in all weathers and temperatures in the garden. I'd 
highly recommend them and they're useful for lots of other stuff too.

I also have a couple of cheap indoor gateways (outdoor ones are way 
too expensive for now) and despite being, well, indoors, they 
unfailingly receive signals from the nodes.

Finally, my previous project, MQTT, has been an integral part of all 
this and a couple of scripts are currently parsing received data. It's 
all good, and the next step is to get my Node Red skills honed so I 
can hopefully display the data in a more user-friendly format.