Still no news on this one? Any chance of just doing really low cost transceiver only for maybe arduino, raspberry pi or something? Does the LoRa part actually require more connections than just SPI to control it externally?
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SX1272RF1BAS/SX1272RF1BAS-ND/4490407 like this one, but maybe with some working examples for the popular prototype platforms?
I don't think most people want the mbed thing, except people who are already familiar with using mbed.
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/flutterwireless/flutter-20-wireless-arduino-with-half-mile-1km-ran Similar to this one, but keep it as cheap as possible, if possible.
I am working to clear the minor hardware bugs on prototype and preparing to produce final prototype. Also I am porting LoRaMac firmware to XRange hardware. I hope that I will have working LoRaMac next week.
I am considering how to lower the cost of XRange, because the price can be obstacle for the hobbyists and makers to use this technology.
It is possible to use sx1272 with Arduino but I think Arduino is not the best platform because the LoRa firmware if fairly complicated is takes about 20K ( LoRaMac about 26K for STM32L152).
To control LoRa you need SPI, one pin to control TX/RX of RF switch, MCU need to monitor DIO0- DIO5 because SX1272 toggle some of this pins on TX or RX event (depends of regime).
I have started with this boards
http://www.digikey.com/product-detail/en/SX1272RF1BAS/SX1272RF1BAS-ND/4490407 (I had to manufacture them because they had not been on stock at that time) but it was very frustrating until I have managed to run semtech's source code on my hardware (I attached the photo of my first hardware). Actually you need two of this board total $140 + shipping. XRange is better value for money, you can take two XRange boars with antennas for $99 , free shipping, source code of firmware and documentation.
Mbed is interesting platform platform but it is optional, firmware can be compiled with any ARM C compiler (I have project for Keil MDK if there is interest I can provide project for GCC).
Flutter is really inexpensive but they can achieve this price because of mass production. They have very successful project on Kickstarter. Did they provide source code and design files of Flutter?