[Feature Request] - Disable LoRa radio in all firmware variants as default

[AI7NC]

Problem:
Currently in all firmware variants, the default radio configuration that is set upon flashing a device is 869.618 MHz at full device power. While this is likely a UK legacy design, I have strong concerns about defaulting to any radio-on state prior to user configuration in an international distribution with varying spectrum regulation.

In the US, 869.618MHz is spectrum dedicated for cellular carrier use. See below search for active licenses in this region. With our users being a general audience interested in off-grid coms with layman knowledge, we're putting them at a disadvantage of properly operating within the compliance of their regional laws.

Of all the areas of spectrum, cellular is the most monitored with the fastest enforcement for being out of compliance, and our 62.5khz bandwidth will stick out like a sore thumb. I believe it is in the best interest of this community to design our firmware to avoid the eventuality of an enforcement action bringing negative publicity the efforts of this group.

How to fix it:
Change the default radio confirmation in the firmware variants to 'disabled' by default. This forces the user to set the regional preset at device confirmation and puts the regional compliance responsibility on the user rather than the firmware originator.

[jade-on-mesh]

I concur, this would be a good change and in my opinion is long overdue.

[jeroen94704]

Coincidence or not, I was just looking at proposing something similar for the admin password. Can this be combined, or should that be a separate feature request?

[AI7NC]

I think that should be a separate discussion. You should open a feature request for that.

[jeroen94704]

Thanks, done: #2012

[txkbaldlaw]

This seems like a sound idea.

It also can help ameliorate people burning out their radio if they don't hook up an antenna before plugging it into their USB for configuration. With the delicateness of the antenna jacks, minimizing the number of required plug/unplug cycles is good practice in my opinion.

Recommend for implementation.

[AI7NC]

It also can help ameliorate people burning out their radio if they don't hook up an antenna before plugging it into their USB for configuration.

That is a benefit of this request I hadn't considered.

[IoTThinks]

Thinking for a quick fix.
Not sure how RadioLib reacts when set LORA_FREQ to 0.0.
May be the radio will fail to init.

  -D LORA_FREQ=869.618
  -D LORA_BW=62.5
  -D LORA_SF=8