Thingiverse
Enclosure for LoRa Button (parametric) by crox
by Thingiverse
Last crawled date: 4 years, 8 months ago
This is an enclosure I designed for the Lora Button board by Iotdevices.
See also github.com/crox-net/lora-button-example.
I assembled it as follows:
insert the screws in the "lid" part, secure them with tape (I used M2.5 x 20 mm screws, M3 should work too)
place the battery inside the compartment with wires sticking out
place the board on top of the battery, connect the wires
place the box on top, flip around, fasten the screws
Look at the pictures for some details.
I use a 4x20x25 mm 150 mAh LiPo battery that I got from ShopOfThings. For people outside of Switzerland you can get them from Aliexpress for instance.
Note that I didn't solder any headers, I used a clamp with pogo pins to program the board. The enclosure might not work as-is with headers soldered on. Everything is parametric though so you can easily adapt it to your needs.
At the moment I'm using this in or around my home only, and as I run my own TTN gateway I haven't paid much attention to the impact of putting the antenna inside a box. Depending on your application you might want to investigate this further. Apparently using white ABS instead of black ABS can already make a difference. And generally speaking, my understanding is that you probably get better performance if the antenna is perpendicular to the board, as the GND copper fill then acts as a ground plane for the antenna. But I'm definitely not an antenna expert. Comments welcome!
See also github.com/crox-net/lora-button-example.
I assembled it as follows:
insert the screws in the "lid" part, secure them with tape (I used M2.5 x 20 mm screws, M3 should work too)
place the battery inside the compartment with wires sticking out
place the board on top of the battery, connect the wires
place the box on top, flip around, fasten the screws
Look at the pictures for some details.
I use a 4x20x25 mm 150 mAh LiPo battery that I got from ShopOfThings. For people outside of Switzerland you can get them from Aliexpress for instance.
Note that I didn't solder any headers, I used a clamp with pogo pins to program the board. The enclosure might not work as-is with headers soldered on. Everything is parametric though so you can easily adapt it to your needs.
At the moment I'm using this in or around my home only, and as I run my own TTN gateway I haven't paid much attention to the impact of putting the antenna inside a box. Depending on your application you might want to investigate this further. Apparently using white ABS instead of black ABS can already make a difference. And generally speaking, my understanding is that you probably get better performance if the antenna is perpendicular to the board, as the GND copper fill then acts as a ground plane for the antenna. But I'm definitely not an antenna expert. Comments welcome!