Sigfox on Raspberry Pi
Based on my sigfox multi-board shield, it is possible to hack sigfox with a raspberry pi. The standard telecom Design firmware allow to use it as a modem. The raspberry Pi just have to send the expected AT commands
Raspberry Pi B+ – RFRPI Shield
I’m proud to announce the compatibility of the RFRPI shield (RF433 transceiver for RPI) with the new Raspberry PI 2+
To get all detailed information about this shield you can read this post
You must use wiringPi >= 2.25 for RPI2+ compatibility.
CentOs 7 have a built-in configuration to close the inactive ssh session. In term of security it is a good thing but when killing a session after 1 minute of inactivity start to be a mess when you have multiple session opened in parallel.
This can be avoid on the client side by configuring a keep-alive period on the client side. To activate a such keepalive, you just have to connect with the following command line:
ssh -o ServerAliveInterval=5 login@server.com
This will configure client to send a NULL packet every 5 seconds to keep the session opened.
If you try to access a remote database with nginx or httpd server, you will have a connection problem with error code (13) even if mysql/mariadb client works well in command line. The reason for that is a security limitation set by default not allowing httpd servers sur connect a remote DB.
To disable this limitation and make all work, just type in the command line :
# setsebool -P httpd_can_network_connect 1
You can list all the existing flags for httpd by using getsebool
# getsebool -a | grep httpd
In case you expect SELinux to be the cause of your problem, you can enable / disable it with the following functions
# setenforce 1 # setenforce 0
If you need to check what is the permission missing for SELinux you can run the audit
# tail -100 /var/log/audit/audit.log | audit2allow
If you want to create a company like infrastruture on Azure you could expect to create a VPN to have a secured access to it and have an internal lan to protect you servers against external access. Basically the system provides all that you need but, as usual in the closed world of MicroSoft. The VPN server based on SSTP protocol sound hard and not documented to be used with MacOsX or Linux.
I’ll describe in this post how I fixed this issue par using an OpenVpn gateway server.
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 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.
Ghost security hole is impacting glibc under 2.18 at least. If you want to know what is your version of glibc you can type :
# ldd --version
sigfox
I had the opportunity, today, to be at the sigfox kickoff day, in Toulouse, with the company I work for. This is an opportunity to post a summary of the technology as it is today.
Sigfox is a network operator for Internet Of Things running on free frequency band (868Mhz in France). Sigfox is deploying itself network in some countries like France. In some other they have partner to deploy it like arquiva in UK (on going actually 10 biggest cities); abertis in Spain, Aerea in Netherland. Actually some European cities are also deployed as pilot : Munich, Menlo, Milan, Warsaw, Dublin, Autria. San Fransisco & Silicon Valley will come soon this year. The target is to have 60 countries in the next 5 Years. Thanks to the long range radio characteristic of the network, Spain has been deployed in 7 months. As to now, the network does not includes roaming constraints & fee. A French licensed device works in any country where the network exists.
The network is high sensitivity with 2 way communication 140 *12 bytes messages a day uplink / 4 * 8 bytes messages downlink. Each of the messages are sent 3 times on different frequency to ensure it will be delivered. The devices are running ultra low energy with 10-25mW radio power. The technology is plug & play : you do not have any peering process to accomplish to make it works (but you have to activate the device in the backend at least…). Data are sent to a global backend whatever the network provider you are passing through and you have contract with. This backend will let you have access to your data in real time and will execute callback (data post) to you own specific backend to proceed your data.
Limits : due to low bandwidth / small messages architecture, the technology does not allow voice, video … transfer for sure. But it is really fitting security, smart cities (traffic, parking waste, street lights…) monitoring, automatic meter reading, leak detection, billing automation…, tracking & security, healthcare (fall detection, distress buttons…), Agriculture.