MakerFocus ESP32 LoRa V3 Development Board with 915 MHz Antenna Integrated WiFi Bluetooth SX1262 CP2102 0.96-inch OLED Display Type C for Meshtastic IoT Arduino Intelligent Scenes

Everything works.

I bought this with the idea of trying something called Meshtastic that I saw on YouTube. I honestly had no clue what I was doing when I ordered this board from Heltec. In a few days though I had a fully running node.The Good: The board itself is thin, lightweight, and ready to go. The best part is the LCD screen is pre-installed/pre-soldered. I am not one who likes to solder things into place or into connections like GPIO pins. The same can be said for the SMA cable attachment point, it is ready to go just click the antenna into place. A nice feature is that any SMA male antenna will work with this rig (seemingly). I have not come across one yet that did not. The unit is super simple to program if you follow the steps online (assuming you are using Meshtastic). Once complete the unit reboots and powered on to become a fully functional node. The range of the LoRa radio on this board is impressive, of course your mileage may very depending on height of placement, etc. Unlike many other project boards I have around the house, this one prefers USB-C instead of micro-USB, making it infinitely more compatible with today's accessories and systems.The Bad: I only found one (1) downside to this board, the antenna. The stock antenna for my version is a harder antenna so it does not place nice with the small cases. The new version appears to have a softer antenna with it.The tl;dr: If you need a LoRa board, I would recommend use this one.

I FINALLY got it to work. Two desktops and two laptops later, I finally found a friend whose laptop was able to flash it. Once that was done, it seems to work fine. Lots of people complain about the little included antenna, but mine seems to work fine. The included case is an added good deal. Saves a few bucks and it works. For the price, a great way to get into LoRa.

The board arrived quickly and was well packaged. It was pretty easy to flash with meshtastic and was up and running with in minutes. I like how the device came with the antenna, power cable, and pins.

It seems to work fine have played with some of the examples but it would have been nice had the board come with some info. But not too hard to find stuff about it on line. Just a good reference to a good web site would have been good. Download the libraries from Arduino IDE for Heltec esp32

Works awesome for my Meshtastic nodes

Could not be happier with the product and seller

Version Board (Pre sept 2018): I have several of these up and running on Wifi and 915Mhz Lora. Using one as a Wifi AP and Lora, the rest to send data to the AP using Lora only. Arduino IDE 1.8 with Radiohead RF95 Lora Library and the Oled library they recommend. I never tried the BlueTooth.The Good:1. It works as advertised2. The factory Library's and Sketches work.3. No issues with the generic ESP32 wifi library's and sketches.4. The colored pinout diagram is good. You can get it at the Heltec websiteThe Not so Good:1. There's no Battery voltage pin. So you need to solder a wire to the connector if you want to read Bat V2. The Battery JST is a 1.25pitch and on the bottom of the board. So you need to remove the board to disconnect the battery.3. There's no V Reg Enable pin, its internally tied to Vcc. Only a ESP32 chip reset pin.4. The LiPo battery charge rate is only 100ma. 200ma would be better5. The provided uFl to SMA cable is cheap, one of mine has connection issues on the uFL side.Update Oct 2018 for Version2 Board: Changing review 4 stars to 3 stars for the version2. The version2 board changes some of the Pin functionality's so watch out if your replacing a V1 board. There's absolutely Zero documentation on the function of theses changes. GitHub does not have the latest V2 schematic. Does pin13 now read battery voltage? If so hows the V-divider set-up? Whats changed with pins 34 and 35 because they don't work the same anymore? Exactly how is this new Vext wired and tied to pin 21? How much current can Vext handle? etc....