Make your IoT design on Sigfox or LoRa ?

LoravsSigfoxOnce you have found the great idea of the year and you want to start implementing your first prototype it is time to choose the right technology. Some would say you should not choose at this step and implement both at end but in my point of view it looks like and economical mistake to do this way. Prototype is to demonstrate and final product. It can request another technology, for sure. But in my point of view the best is to take the right one at the beginning. For most LoRa and Sigfox are both equivalent or for some others one is over the other one, best depends who you ask. In my point of view, if I consider my 2-3 years sigfox experience and my starting experience on LoRa with 1 year background research on it, there is no magic answer. Context of your idea is the keypoint then you have some technical elements to take into account to finalize your decision.

This post will try to illustrate where each of the technology is the best and give you some decision keypoints.

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Simple LoRa GPS tracker based on RN2483 and L80

LoRa GPS Tracker

LoRa GPS Tracker

Todays work was to make a simple GPS tracker communicating over LoRaWAN to check the coverage of my LoRaWan gateway in the city. Basically this tracker reports a position per minute to the network. If coverage is good, position will be recorded in the backend. That’s all !

This post details how to do it easily with the low cost and common components : Arduino for the master, Microchip RN2483 for LoRaWan communication and L80 for GPS positioning.

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LoRaWan experimentation with Kerlink gateway

kerlink LoRa gateway

kerlink LoRa gateway

Until the reality of a LoRa public network in France, to test this technology the best way is to have its own LoRaWAN getway. This is a thing done with the kerlink gateway.

This post will detail the first steps to install it and start to communicate.

 

 

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Let’s graph the Internet of Things

plot-IoTIoT is generating data and to quicky look at it during the prototype phase is sounds good to plot these data in a dashboard. There are many solution you can install on your server and configure to get pretty nice dashboard. But if you want to go faster it would be really nice to have a SaaS solution for doing this. I have tested some of the solution I have found and friends helped me to found (not easy to search on google …). This post details these experiments

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First step in LoRa land – microchip RN2483 test

Microchip RN2483 Lora

Microchip RN2483 Lora

After spending some time reading and writing about LoRa it was a good time to make some real test of this technology.

As actually there is no network for LoRa, as much as I know, in my town, I expected to start a simple LoRa test (point to point and not as part of a WAN). I just bought some RN2483 LoRa module from Microchip online and also get some from Avnet (thank you Guillaume)

 

The module is easy to solder on a prototype board and get its command over a serial port. I choose to make two modules :

  • The first one is connected to a FTDI cable and will stay at home as a basestation
  • The second one is connected to an Arduino and will be a mobile device for my test

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What is LoRa ?

Lora-300x171LoRa is a dedicated network for Internet Of Things and Machine2Machine communications. It is actually the main competitor against SigFox.

As LoRa is actually rising in France with different announce from 2 of the main cellular operators deploying the network, it is a good time to have a post on what it is, how it works and what differs compared with SigFox.

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Some GNSS / GPS stuff that are good to know for IoT

gpsWhen you start developing a GPS solution, you have to deal with energy and for this you have to create a strategy based on what you expect and the size of your battery.

Basically, a GPS is consuming about 25mA when running. An active antenna will consume about 10mA more. The first time you start it, it have to sync with the satellites, get the ephemeris then you can position in 2D then in 3D.

Read more for more information

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Hack the SigFox KeyApp demonstrator / tool

Sigfox keyapp

Sigfox keyapp

The Sigfox keyapp is a useful tool you can buy or you can get when reaching the Sigfox kick-start session. Basically, this tool send a message each time you click on the button. This allow to check the network availability where you want just clicking on the button. Easy, useful !

The KeyApp have an internal battery, one led, one button. It is refill with the usb connector and it is based on TD1208. The internal firmware is a partial modem ; it can be used as a modem on serial port from a PC but not all the AT command are implemented on it.

My purpose was to modify this tool to send automatically message every 12 minutes. The firmware can be modified and upload on the standard way (take a look to my other posts). For sure by doing a such thing you take the risk of loosing warranty and you do it at your own risk.

To make it works you just have to know some of the cabling.

  • The Led is active HIGH and located on USR4 signal.
  • To enable the battery power, you must activate USR1 LOW
  • To read the button you must take a look on USR0

The battery is by default not powering the system until you switch USR1 to LOW. If you do not do this, the system will only work on the usb power. It means you can switch off the system simply by switching USR1 to high.

Will come soon a basic sample code.