Review: Seeed SenseCAP T1000 LoRaWAN Tracker

Electronics Internet of Things
Review: Seeed SenseCAP T1000 LoRaWAN Tracker

By David Groom

David Groom

David bought his first Arduino in 2007 as part of a Roomba hacking project. Since then, he has been obsessed with writing code that you can touch. David fell in love with the original Pebble smartwatch, and even more so with its successor, which allowed him to combine the beloved wearable with his passion for hardware hacking via its smartstrap functionality. Unable to part with his smartwatch sweetheart, David wrote a love letter to the Pebble community, which blossomed into Rebble, the service that keeps Pebbles ticking today, despite the company's demise in 2016. When he's not hacking on wearables, David can probably be found building a companion bot, experimenting with machine learning, growing his ever-increasing collection of dev boards, or hacking on DOS-based palmtops from the 90s.

Find David on Mastodon at @ishotjr@chaos.social and to a far lesser extent on Twitter at @IShJR.

View more articles by David Groom

Manufacturer: Seeed

Kickstarter Campaign

Price: $29

Seeed SenseCAP T1000 LoRaWAN Tracker

Many years ago, I set my backpack up with…its own server. Just a little Raspberry Pi Zero Wireless, but it could provide access to files, along with various other things, including tracking its location and alerting me to changes via IFTTT. The problem was that it could only update when on Wi-Fi, and specifically with Wi-Fi that had already been configured. Various 2 or 3G solutions existed, but they mostly required expensive ongoing contracts, which wasn’t really worth it for my silly little project. Fast-forward to 2023, however, and things have evolved considerably. Seeed’s SenseCAP T1000 is just bigger than a credit card, yet can continuously log location and sensor data for over a month on a single charge, via LoRaWAN.

Unlike many of Seeed’s more prototyping-oriented products, the T1000 is a consumer-ready device, with an IP65 water-resistant case and magnetic charging rather than USB. Despite its compact size, it features global LoRaWAN and Bluetooth 5.1, temperature and light sensors, an accelerometer, and piezo buzzer for aural feedback. A 700mAH battery provides up to four months’ usage when updates are reduced to hourly.

Configuration is performed via the SenseCAP Mate App, which takes just a few clicks and pairs the device with your phone via Bluetooth. For extensive data viewing, the SenseCAP Web Portal provides fleet management tools and numerous options for working with your collected sensor measurements, including graphing and export. An easy-to-use API allows you to go far beyond the dashboard’s capabilities with a generous free tier.

The SenseCAP T1000 crowdfunding campaign ends tomorrow, September 9th, so if you want to get in on the 27% backer discount at $29, now is your chance! Also available via the campaign is the more maker-focused Wio 1110 Dev Board, which is a similarly LoRaWAN-focused platform, but with Grove connectors so that you can add whatever sensors you like. Be on the lookout for a hands-on review of the prototype here soon! While it’s important to remind readers that Kickstarter is not a store, and crowdfunding campaigns do not always deliver, Seeed is a large, very-well respected company in the maker space, and we’ve already played with the device, so you should be able to back with confidence.

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By David Groom

David Groom

David bought his first Arduino in 2007 as part of a Roomba hacking project. Since then, he has been obsessed with writing code that you can touch. David fell in love with the original Pebble smartwatch, and even more so with its successor, which allowed him to combine the beloved wearable with his passion for hardware hacking via its smartstrap functionality. Unable to part with his smartwatch sweetheart, David wrote a love letter to the Pebble community, which blossomed into Rebble, the service that keeps Pebbles ticking today, despite the company's demise in 2016. When he's not hacking on wearables, David can probably be found building a companion bot, experimenting with machine learning, growing his ever-increasing collection of dev boards, or hacking on DOS-based palmtops from the 90s.

Find David on Mastodon at @ishotjr@chaos.social and to a far lesser extent on Twitter at @IShJR.

View more articles by David Groom
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