If you’re into tinkering with electronics, the T-Echo Plus from LILYGO is a pretty cool tracker board that gives you lots of features in one compact gadget. It’s meant for makers, students, engineers, basically anyone who enjoys building things like IoT devices, trackers or wearable projects.
Before learning about this product, you may go through LILYGO’s other products, such as the T-Display Bar and the T-Circle series, which we have previously covered.
What makes the T-Echo Plus special? One is that it uses the nRF52840 microcontroller, which has 2 MB of flash and 2 MB of RAM. That is a good memory to execute moderately sized codes and libraries. Then there is the wireless like Bluetooth 5, Thread, Bluetooth Mesh, ANT, 802.15.4 and Zigbee, so it is quite broad with systems, which need to be networked, too.
It also has a LoRa transceiver (SX1262) that has a global frequency of 433 MHz, 868 MHz and 915 MHz on the radio side. i.e. you can do long-range and low-power communication, which is great with outdoor sensors or tracing them over a long distance. It even has its GNSS (Global Navigation Satellite System) module that operates with GPS, GLONASS, BeiDou and QZSS, and in case you need to know where their location is on your side.
And the display, 200×200 resolution, 2-level grey, 1.54-inch SPI e-paper display. It consumes very little power when at rest since it is e-paper, hence suitable for battery-operated applications. The board has an in-built 2400 mAh battery that lasts long when used on the go.
The board also has some nice physical improvements: a ¼-inch mount interface (so you can bolt it to things easily) and a climbing finger loop (which sounds convenient if you’re mounting or carrying it). Also, a buzzer and a vibration motor are included, so you can add audible or haptic feedback (cool for alerts or notifications).
The LILYGO T-Echo Plus has factory firmware and open-source software such as Meshtastic, LoRa mesh networking. It may be programmed through Arduino IDE or PlatformIO with the nRF52840 chip and flashed through USB easily. LILYGO also has their GitHub where you can find the sample codes, documentation, and community guides to assist with its installation and customisation. In general, it has good software support for both beginners and developers.
As of now, the LILYGO T-Echo Plus tracker board is sold in the range of ₹13,000 to ₹16,000 based on the seller and model. On the official LILYGO site, the starting price is approximately $64.22 at the base price. The previous model T-Echo Meshtastic can be purchased on several websites, on the official store of LILYGO, AliExpress, Amazon, and other online electronics stores. The majority of models, including the 915 MHz and 868 MHz, are currently out of stock, depending on the area and frequency band.
Sayantan Nandy