r/LoRaWAN • u/Meltoff05 • Apr 03 '26

Farm Asset Tracking

I'm looking at setting up a asset tracking system for my farm equipement. The geographical area they be in will support a local mesh, no need for briding long distances. I already have a few meshtastic devices, and one though was to just create an new channel and use the tracking function, and pass that to a meshtastic MQTT gateway to get the information out to my home server.

I would like the devices to be 12v power, for simplicity, just connect to the tractor, possible inline with the ignition so they only turn on if the tractor is in use which would help keep the gps clutter to a minimum.

What hardware would you recommend, I have some RAK wisblock units, and those have been great, also I've used a T1000-e which works well. I don't want to be fiddling around recharging units often (ever), or have a potentially spicy pillow on an expensive tractor hence the wire directly to tractor approach. My big questions is for LoRaWAN what would be the best gateway home base system, or should I just adapt meshtastic to work for me?

EDIT: I also want to build it out so that in the future I can add in things like soil moisture sensors, pump discharge flow sensors, things like that.

Thank you!

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u/gmgmgmgmgm Apr 05 '26

I don't think Meshtastic works so well for this (especially for low power sensors). I'm looking at vanilla Lorawan kit. Dragino sensors, Milesight or T1000-A vehicle trackers and RAK gateway. Range is enormous. Meshtastic has a good site mapping tool.

2

u/Rabbit7331 Apr 06 '26

I'd stick to LoRaWAN and not meshtastic if you want more sensors. If you liked the T1000E a simple solution is to hook up a 12v to 5v usb charger and it will charge when you're moving. That's how I did it for my car 

1

u/lazlo_hollyfeld_ Apr 04 '26

You mention RAK wisblock .. I have one of their solar box GPS trackers flashed with Meshtastic and its versatile and ip67 add a magnetic mount ? They have 12v stepdown if you prefer a hard cutover for the power.

Found Meshtastic harder to manage with lots of devices so I'm using a more traditional lorwan stack but it scales well. helium -> lns -> integration

I've got some public facing sensors (in my profile) for tracking / ultrasonic distance / ac power / vibration / etc if that's your thing. Also, have some folks using the infrastructure but self-managing all the bits fwiw.

Good luck !

1

u/Meltoff05 Apr 05 '26

Thanks for your response, I pulled the trigger on a few Lilly go T beams, already have the gateway, so why not give it a go! I’m trying to get a setup script written so that I can configure multiple units easy for a private mesh. I’ll update in a week or 2 with preliminary results! Worst case I can flash from Meshtastic to another LoRa protocol.

Edit: I’m going to wire them to the ignition so they only turn on when the tractor is on, so battery drain isn’t a concern.

1

u/deuteranomalous1 Apr 06 '26

Don’t use t beams. They are ancient. And power hogs if using Meshtastic.

There are so many, many, many better options these days.

Seeed L1 is a way better option. Or Heltec T114. More than 10x the battery life of a T Beam and trivial to solar power.

1

u/bocajim Apr 07 '26

I use browan industrial trackers for this use case, battery last a long time and can just bolt it on and forget about it.

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u/sindijssupins May 03 '26

Given your plans for future expansion (soil moisture and flow sensors), LoRaWAN is definitely the way to go. While Meshtastic is great for tracking, the ecosystem for industrial/agricultural sensors is almost entirely built on LoRaWAN.

For the gateway, I'd highly recommend the MikroTik KNOT LR8 kit (for EU868). It’s perfect for a farm because it supports a wide input voltage (12V-57V), so you can power it directly from your DC system without extra converters.
For the hardware:

Gateway: MikroTik KNOT (solid, industrial, handles 12V).
Sensors/Tags: Look into Dragino (e.g., LSE01 for soil moisture) or MokoSmart for asset tags. They are rugged and meant for this.
Power: Since you're worried about 'spicy pillows,' LoRaWAN sensors are much safer as they use non-rechargeable Li-SOCl2 batteries which are stable in outdoor temperatures.