“LILYGO MySondy GO LoRa32” is a small ESP32-PICO-D4 board with a 433 MHz LoRa module and a 0.96-inch OLED designed to track (RS41) radiosondes, which are units attached to weather balloons used to collect meteorological data like temperature, humidity, and atmospheric pressure.
It looks to be an older TTGO T3 board with a 433 MHz LoRa32 module from the company preloaded with the MySondo firmware that allows hobbyists in the amateur radio and weather enthusiast communities to track weather balloons and potentially recover them.
LILYGO MySondy GO LoRa32 specifications:
- SiP – Espressif Systems ESP32-PICO-D4 system-in-package with ESP32 dual-core Xtensa processor @ 240 MHz, 2.4GHz Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4.2 dual-mode, 4MB flash
- LoRa module – LORA32
- RF Transceiver – Semtech SX1268 connected over SPI to the ESP32 SiP
- Frequency – 433 MHz (The T3 board has options for 868 and 915 MHz, which I suspect are not suitable for radiosondes)
- Tx Power – Up to +14 dBm
- Rx current – 9.9mA
- Storage – MicroSD card slot
- Display – 0.96-inch OLED with 128×64 resolution (SSD1306 I2C display driver)
- Expansion – 2x 13-pin GPIO header with UART, SPI, I2C, VP/VN, ADC, DAC, TOUCH, LoRa1/2, and 5V, 3.3V, and GND power signals
- Misc
- Antennas
- 3D antenna for WiFi/BLE
- SMA antenna connector for LoRa
- Battery switch
- Reset and Boot buttons
- Antennas
- Power Supply
- 5V via USB-C port
- 3.7V LiPo battery support
- Dimensions – 66 x 36 x 15 mm
I initially struggled to find details about the T3 board as we’ve never written about it, and search engines are not reporting much, but I eventually found it’s also simply called the LoRa32 board. The specifications also mention the LILYGO T3 board is programmable with Arduino and Micropython, but it’s not relevant here since the board comes pre-loaded with the MySondy GO firmware. It does not appear to be open-source, but binary files are provided as well as an API.
The user then needs to install the MySondy GO app for iOS or Android to connect to a smartphone over Bluetooth and leverage 433 MHz LoRa connectivity to get the position of the weather balloon, the position of the smartphone, and all the data received.
The project has been around for a few years, but people used to have to manually install the firmware, and now a MySondo GO LoRa32 board makes things easier as it’s plug-and-play. It’s also possible to 3D print an enclosure.
You can get support for the project via the forums where discussions are in English, albeit the project seems especially popular in Italy since that’s where (most of?) the developers are based.
LILYGO sells the MySondy GO LoRa32 for $21.98 on AliExpress with a LoRa antenna, battery wires, and headers. The system will work best for tracking weather balloons when multiple LoRa nodes are used, since the range for one node should be 5 to 10 km.
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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