LoRa Electric Bicycle Rental Tracking System

Electric assist bicycles are just now starting to catch on in North America. Quikbyke launched in June 2016 with our first prototype rental "shop-in-a-box" based on a repurposed 20 ft side-loading shipping container. Powered entirely by 1,800W of solar panels and 400 Ah of battery storage, we successfully demonstrated that we could keep our 6 ProdecoTech Stride 300 eBikes powered using solar energy alone. What we weren't able to do was track where those bikes went. All of our clients the first summer were wonderfully responsible. No bikes were damaged or stolen, but neither did we know where they rode, hence our interest in using small GPS trackers using the LoRa system. While GSM-based trackers are available, the monthly charges per bike would be prohibitive; whereas if we could consolidate our gateway-to-cloud costs into one or two strategically placed gateways, we could effectively reduce communications costs.