LoRa/LoRaWAN

LoRa standards for Long Range. LoRa is a low bandwidth, but long range radio communications protocol.

LoRaWAN builds a networking protocol on top of of LoRa physical layer.

LoRaWAN

LoRaWAN: Installing Basic Station and connecting to The Things Network V3 Stack

February 18, 2021 Craig Peacock 14

With the migration of The Things Network to the version 3 stack, I thought it was an opportune time to upgrade my Raspberry PI based gateway from the legacy Semtech packet forwarder to Basic Station. Basic Station LoRaWAN gateway maintainers should be using secured and encrypted connections to the LoRaWAN Network Server (LNS) rather than the old legacy packet forwarder using UDP packets. Semtech provide opensource software called LoRa Basics™ Station for this purpose: Basic Station exchanges data as JSON encoded objects over secure WebSockets.  The gateway identifies itself with a secret API key, ensuring it’s authorised. In addition to …

LoRaWAN

RN2903: Using the LoRaWAN™ Library Plug-in for MPLAB® Code Configurator and customising for the AU915 Frequency Plan

September 19, 2018 Craig Peacock 5

The RN2903 Wireless LoRa Module from Microchip ships with an on-board LoRaWAN Class A protocol stack. This stack can be accessed via ASCII based commands over a UART interface. For many, this is the interface of choice, offloading the complexity of the LoRaWAN stack to a dedicated processor contained within the module. Another advantage is Microchip can fully certify the module and stack. I decided not to use the on-board stack for two reasons: Here in Australia, we must use the AU915 frequency plan. Microchip has beta firmware for this frequency plan, but it is not yet publicly available. Developers …

LoRaWAN

Microchip RN2903 LoRa Transceiver Breakout Board

September 15, 2018 Craig Peacock 4

A breakout board for Microchip’s series of LoRa transceiver modules: RN2483 fully-certified 433/868 MHz Module (Europe) RN2903 fully-certified 915 MHz Module (North America, Australia) The RN2483/RN2903 LoRa modules contain a Microchip PIC18LF46K22 MCU with a Semtech SX1276 radio transceiver and is intended as a complete certified solution with LoRaWAN Class A protocol stack and an ASCII command interface over a UART connection. However, if you want to get under the hood, MicroChip provide details in the LoRaWAN Library Plug-in for MPLAB Code Configurator User’s Guide on how to target the on-board PIC18LF46K22 and customise the module for your own purposes. RN2903 Pin Out (XLSX) Design Files …

LoRaWAN

RAK833/RAK2247 LoRaWAN Concentrator

August 29, 2018 Craig Peacock 9

This board is a Raspberry PI Hat for the RAK833/RAK2247 LoRa Concentrator Gateway Modules. The RAK2247 is improved version of the RAK833 with better heatsinking, a boost in the maximum transmission power and improved interference immunity. Both are a smaller version of the popular RAK831. The RAK831 is larger, about the same footprint than a Raspberry PI and requires a breakout board to convert the RAK831’s 24 pin connector to the Raspberry PI’s 40 pin connector. The RAK833 is a more elegant industry standard PCI Express Mini Card form factor (Type F2). The RAK833 module consists of a Semtech SX1301 Digital Baseband chip …