LoRa on OGLAS — Off-Grid Local Alert System

Door / Gate

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The OGLAS door / gate node knows two things: when something is open, and how to open it on command. A paddock gate, a shed door, a depot roller door — same node, same wireless link as the rest of your sensors.

What it does

Detects open/closed state — a reed or limit switch on the frame trips the device, which immediately reports the state change to your hub.
Opens on command — a signal from the hub (or a button in your vehicle) pulses an output that drives your motor or relay. You can open a single door/gate or every one at once.
Reports when it’s done — confirms back to the hub so you know the action ran.

The matching bell can ring a buzzer indoors the moment it trips — works as well on a farm entrance as on a yard gate or a shed left open overnight. See Monitoring and alerts.

LoRa Hub

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The OGLAS LoRa Hub is the simplest way to start, and the default for most sites. It sits on a shelf in the shed or office, listens for sensor messages over long-range LoRa, and logs everything to local storage. No display required — point Local on a laptop, SBC, or NAS at it and you’ve got the lot.

What it does

Listens for sensor readings from every device in range, confirms back so the sensor knows it got through.
Listens on short-range wireless as well — a shorter-range link that uses less airtime, so nearby sensors save battery and leave the long-range channel clear for the ones that need it.
Stores readings locally to flash / SD / a connected host, in a format you control. Your data, your formats, your backups — see Your data is your data.
Forwards commands — when you want to open a gate or ring a bell, the hub sends the instruction to the right device and collects the response.

Hardware

Purpose-built wireless hardware with long-range LoRa radio. Compact, low-power, designed to sit on a shelf and run 24/7.

Mesh Hub

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

The OGLAS Mesh Hub is for sites where a straight radio line from sensor to hub doesn’t exist. Instead of every device needing to reach the hub directly, devices (and dedicated repeaters) relay for each other — a reading hops node to node until it lands at the hub.

When you want mesh

Broken line-of-sight — a hill, a steel shed, a tree line, or a fold in the ground sits between a sensor and the hub.
Sprawling sites — the far corners are past the range of a single LoRa link, but there are devices in between to carry the signal.
Resilience — if one path goes down, traffic finds another way through the mesh rather than a sensor simply going silent.

What it does

Collects from the mesh — confirms readings and logs them locally, exactly like the LoRa Hub, but the messages arrive via one or more hops.
Self-heals — nodes discover neighbours and re-route automatically as devices come and go or conditions change.
Mixes sensors and repeaters — most OGLAS sensors can carry mesh traffic for their neighbours; add low-cost repeaters to bridge the gaps that have no sensor of their own.

Trade-offs, honestly

Mesh buys coverage at the cost of a little latency and power — each hop adds a small delay, and relaying nodes can’t sleep as deeply as a leaf sensor talking straight to a hub. For most sites that’s a fair trade for reaching the spots a single link can’t. If you can see the hub from everywhere, the LoRa Hub is simpler.

No telco dependency

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

A lot of “smart” sensors assume your gate, your tank, and your shed all have decent 4G coverage. Most off-grid sites don’t. OGLAS doesn’t need them to.

How sensors talk

Every OGLAS sensor talks to the hub over long-range wireless — the same class of low-power radio used for everything from livestock trackers to satellite uplinks. Range is measured in kilometres, not metres. Power draw is low enough to run for a season on a single battery.