We've been working on an experimental wireless video transmission system using LoRa modulation, and we wanted to see how far we could push it beyond the usual low-bandwidth sensor data.

The goal was to transmit a live video stream over a custom radio link while keeping latency low enough for the received video to remain usable in real time.

The system is built around a custom PCB integrating a Luckfox Pico, ESP32-S3 and NiceRF LoRa module based on the LR2021.

Technical details

Radio: LR2021, LoRa modulation, SF5, 1 MHz bandwidth

Frequency: 868 MHz region, with frequency hopping across a ±20 MHz range

Transmit power: 500 mW

Packet rate: 100 packets/s

Receiver diversity: Two receivers with separate antennas; packets are combined during frame reconstruction

Video: 288p at 25 FPS

Frame recovery: Intra-refresh using vertical stripes, without IDR frames

Forward error correction: 25% FEC packets

Latency: Under 150 ms median

One of the biggest challenges was making video work over such a constrained…