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How far can I broadcast LoRa packets WITHOUT a radio? - LoLRa

How far can I broadcast LoRa packets WITHOUT a radio? - LoLRa on HackerTube: recommended by 1 Hacker News commenter across 1 month, 2024–2026.

CNLohr

demo · advanced · evergreen

Open on YouTube

CNLohr explains how he made an ESP32 produce valid LoRa packets without a LoRa radio, using aliasing and clever signal tricks. It walks through the RF math and shows how far the signals reach.

Why Hacker News recommends it

HN cites it as a striking example of radio hacking with commodity chips.

people recommended it
1
separate months
1
strong recommendations
0
discussed on HN
2024–2026
“you can still get several km of range. Truly crazy stuff.”
— yonatan8070, Jul 2025, in “Show HN: A high-altitude low-power flight computer for high-altitude balloons”

What HN commenters said

3 Hacker News comments link this video. Each one links back to its thread.

airbreatherJan 2026Recommends

check out this guy, doing something similar sending Lora packets without a radio - ▶ this video "This video explores LoRaWAN communication using a microcontroller without a dedicated radio chip. CNLohr demonstrates techniques to transmit LoRa packets over surprisingly long distances, pushing the limits of inexpensive hardware. The project involves creative software and hardware interaction to generate signals at unexpected frequencies."

in “Time Station Emulator” · View on HN

yonatan8070Jul 2025Cites it

In fact, it's so robust that even when your antenna is a piece of wire hanging off a GPIO of a microcontroller with absolutely no dedicated radio hardware, you can still get several km of range. Truly crazy stuff. ▶ this video

in “Show HN: A high-altitude low-power flight computer for high-altitude balloons” · View on HN

donquichotteSep 2024Cites it

cnlohr is in his own league, this guy is bordering on genius. Dissatisfied with the state of the vendor SDK for CH32V003 microcontrollers (ultra-cheap RISC-V MCUs), he created his own [1], which is a pleasure to use. He also has a header-only RISC-V emulator that runs Linux (and Doom!) [2], and hacked an ESP32 to emit valid LORA frames with clever use of aliasing [3]. [1] [link] [2] [link] [3] ▶ this video

in “Rawdrawandroid – Build Android apps without any Java, in C and Make” · View on HN

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