Get 5km+ of FPV Drone Flight with the Crossbow LoRa RC Link

The primary factor limiting the practical range of drones is the RC (radio control) link between the transmitter on the controller and the receiver on board the drone. That’s particularly true if you have an FPV (first-person view) setup, which allows you to keep flying even when you can’t see your done well — or even at all. But, there is a lot of data to transmit, and radio signals can be fickle, which means you might lose a reliable connection a few hundred feet away or a mile away.

YouTuber Pawel Spychalski’s Crossbow project is intended to keep that connection reliable up to at least 5km (about 3 miles). It uses LoRa, which is a long-range wireless communications protocol in the sub-gigahertz RF range designed specifically to work well over long distances. It was also created with low-power operation in mind, which makes it ideal for battery-powered vehicles like drones.

If you’ve already got the standard RC equipment for your drone, converting it to use Crossbow should cost less than $40. You can either connect a LoRa module to an Arduino-compatible board, or use a dedicated LoRa development board like the Adafruit Feather 32u4 RFM LoRa. Crossbow is still largely experimental and very early in the development stage, so setting it up will take some skill. But, Spychalski’s tests show it already working well up to 1.1km, and LoRa is theoretically capable of transmitting over distances of more than 10km.