Packets, Data, and Weather. Oh my!

Wireless Communication is a very crowded world, and for hobbyists and hardware developers - no one technology seems to fit perfectly. Communication has turned into a soup of acronyms and protocols – ZigBee, Z-Wave, LTE-M2M, CAT-1 M, WiFi, LoRA, Satellite, and many others. How do you find your way when trying to develop a project? What cost do you have to factor in? In a perfect world we can use satellite to communicate data freely. However, this type of communication is limited due to high cost factors associated with it. More cost effective methods exist such as mesh networking, but how do you relay data effectively and ensure transmission of important data. The goal for this talk is to be somewhat interactive with people who are interested or work with these technologies. We will be covering the challenges of being in remote regions and transmitting data most effectively including power cost to distance. For people who are simply interested in wireless communication, this talk will cover the challenges we faced building a mesh wireless network and the many design revisions we had to complete to build something usable. In addition, we will cover our design choices on why we picked certain technologies over others.