As a Londoner I find it really hard to test any of this stuff properly as open space is at a premium and if you put boxes on poles up on the public land near where I live, people will think you're spying on them or doing something nefarious. It's just one of those things you get from living in London.
This weekend though, it got the real test as we conducted a site visit so we could plan out how we are going to use the various buildings and areas which allowed me to test in the actual environment.
I'm glad to say it all worked, but the heavy foliage on all the trees and shrubs really killed range and I had to put the test nodes much closer together than I hoped. Of course the point of all this is that the wearable/portable devices should gap-fill to ensure coverage but for one thing I need a guaranteed 'corridor' from one area to another so it's guaranteed to be always up.
I really must design those custom LiPo powered PCBs for the ESP8285 modules I have and order them from China. The current test boxes are based around WeMos D1 Mini Pro and Poundland NiMH batteries so they work but are a bit inefficient and simply won't run a whole weekend. My power budget suggests an ESP8285 powered by two 18650s and the high efficiency switched mode power supply I've specified will.
