LoRa-concentrator

The target of this repository files is to send different kinds of payloads from simple LoRa nodes to a Raspberry Pi LoRa concentrator (or gateway) to be converted to MQTT and elaborated via Node-Red or sent to LoRaWAN.

Nodes

Nodes consist of Arduino boards like Arduino Pro Mini or ESP32 mounting LoRa modules like SX127x or RF9x. The most popular libraries:

• RadioHead (Adafruit adaption) https://github.com/adafruit/RadioHead
• Arduino-LoRa (by Sandeep Mistry ) https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-LoRa
• Heltec LoRa-BLE-WiFi-ESP32 https://github.com/Heltec-Aaron-Lee/WiFi_Kit_series (install guides included)

Note: Be aware that Arduino-LoRa and Heltec LoRa libraries cannot easily coexist because of duplicated library error when compiling for Lora-ESP32 board

Concentrator

The concentrator is made of a Raspberry Pi Rev. 2 with SX127x module and is based on library:

• PyLoRa (by MayerAnalytics) https://github.com/rpsreal/pySX127x - https://pypi.org/project/pyLoRa/

Preparation

All these tests were made using a Raspberry Pi concentrator prepared as follows. These steps are just provided as an example and should be adapted to your setting:

• download and install Raspbian to SD card, plug to Raspberry, boot and follow installation procedure
• enable SPI (GPIO interface) using raspi-config tool via terminal console
• install PyLoRa library (link above)
• test your LoRa module with PyLoRa to get messages from sensors
• install Paho-MQTT to allow sending mqtt packets from Python scripts https://pypi.org/project/paho-mqtt/
• install Mosquitto MQTT broker (kind of server) on local or remote machine, that will manage MQTT messages
• test publishing MQTT LoRA messages via python script and show them in console using Mosquitto
• install node-red (if not already installed) and set a flow to get and use your incoming MQTT data
• install node-red Dashboard to create a dashboard for your sensors data that you can edit via nodes and flows
• install node-red-admin to set a degree of security if you wish to access your node-red remotely https://nodered.org/docs/security#http-node-security - Be aware that this is NOT a strong security setting (see link below).
• create a python script to perform the lora listening an MQTT publishing, and set it to start at boot

Authors

• Members of Fablab Imperia (https://fablabimperia.org/ - https://wiki.fablabimperia.org/)

See also

Lora

• http://wiki.dragino.com/index.php?title=LoRa_Questions
• https://forum.loraserver.io/t/relation-between-sync-word-private-network-and-end-nodes/191/11
• travisgoodspeed/loraham#19 libraries comparison
• https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-LoRa
• https://github.com/sandeepmistry/arduino-LoRa/blob/master/API.md
• https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/story/build-the-cheapest-possible-node-yourself

ESP32 board

• https://hackaday.io/project/26991-esp32-board-wifi-lora-32

IR nodes

• https://learn.sparkfun.com/tutorials/ir-communication

Node-red

• https://diyprojects.io/node-red-installation-discovery-raspberry-pi3/
• https://github.com/node-red/cookbook.nodered.org/wiki/How-to-safely-expose-Node-RED-to-the-Internet

MQTT

• http://www.steves-internet-guide.com/into-mqtt-python-client/

other issues

• https://andreasrohner.at/posts/Electronics/How-to-make-the-Watchdog-Timer-work-on-an-Arduino-Pro-Mini-by-replacing-the-bootloader/

Licenses

The sketches provided are licensed under the MIT Licence. Other files provided as example belong to their respective owners as stated within each file.