I’ve published a post in January 2019 on a solution to alarm you TTN gateway. It was based on noc API but these API have been deprecated. It means this solution is not working anymore.
So I’m investigating some new solution: the more relevant is the use of TTN cli solution.
Let’s seen what can we do with this.
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I really love Reece Innovation Solar powered pod product developed by my friend Jose Marcelino. They’ve made a agricultural / industrial autonomous solar powered LoRaWan gateway for a really competitive price. With much more money to extend TheThingsNetwork in my city I would have used a such solution. But as this is just a hobby for me, I’m looking for really low cost solution, something under 500€ per gateway.
My main issue to extend the network is not really to find roof but to find some where I can pass an Ethernet cable and provide the power from it. I have some place where I could deploy new gateway in conduction to be cable-less. The network is not the main issue as most of the time a WiFi network is accessible. Powering is a larger problem to solve. Advantages of outdoor gateway: you have sun available. So, as Reece Innovation did, I decided to make my solar gateway, the main differences are: my will have no LTE communication capability (only WiFi) and it have to cost as less as possible.
Let see what I’ve done
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I’ve been talking about this ultra low cost LoRaWan gateway in last October and ordered one. The time to get it has been long as it has been arrived in February this year. This sounds due to an early ordering as the product is now available, even on Amazon for a price under 180€.
This price is not so low if you compare to a Laird Sentrius but we are not talking the same product ! Here we have an outdoor gateway with PoE powering. That’s really interesting. The only missing thing is a LTE communication.
This gateway exists in two different version LoRa8 for 868Mhz zones and LoRa9 for 902 MHz zone.
Let’s see it in detail and find how to configure it for joining TTN.
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HTMicron is a Brazilian company making System In Package (SIP) solution. During Sigfox Connect, they shown a STM32-SLP product and gave me an eval board for reviewing.
This type of solution is interesting as it is really compact and easy to add in your design: you get a powerful ARM chip from ST + all the electronic needed for a Sigfox global communication system. There is no need for an extra component around the chip, more than an antenna and a power supply.
The price for the SIP is going to be around $5.
Let see how to use that chip.
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Previously in my blog post “I held the first $1 Sigfox device“, I’ve explained how the Sigfox network will soon accept some really low cost Radio MCU chip on its network. One of them is the cmostek CMT2189C MCU. It has a cost around $0.25 and has it own integrated radio compatible to Sigfox. This device has initially been made to support garage door remote and it has a lot of limitation. However, you can imagine many application. This post details the first steps to get a development environment ready. And this should save some of your time by going directly to the right way.
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We previously discovered the UnaMKR devkit. This devkit has two boards. The module board with the radio module and the sensors. It is the one I talked about in my previous post. The Arduino board is the second one. By programming this Arduino MKR Zero you can create custom program to use sensors and radio module to experiment Sigfox. The big advantage is a single board where ever you are located as it supports all the Sigfox zones.
During this second step, we are going to see how we can use the devkit to make a simple sensor measuring and reporting.
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Unabiz has recently released the first Sigfox Monarch certified devkit. It is based on a LiteOn WSG309S module. The LiteOn module contains a St-Microelectronics based solution including a BlueNRG / S2LP in it.
In addition, the module board also have different sensors: temperature, humidity, pressure, air quality, accelerometer, magnetometer, light sensor, magnetic switch (reed switch).
You are able to use the module board as a standalone circuit. You directly program the LiteOn module. Or you can use the standard AT interface of the module and connect an Arduino MKR Zero board to use it.
In this post, we are going to see how to use the kit to test Sigfox Monarch solution.
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Sigfox Monarch service is a free global service allowing to determine the zone where a device is located.
By zone location I mean RC (Radio Configuration zone). It basically defines the European Zone (RC1) or the North American Zone (RC2)…
Thank to this technology a world-wide device, having no GPS to get its location, is able to determine its radio configuration and the associated frequencies to use for transmissions.
This service is covering most of the airports and ports around the world to support the existing customer use-cases like Louis-Vuiton tracker and Safecube container tracking.
It would be great if this service could, in the future, be also used to broadcast/multicast information to devices. It could be used to get time from the network and later be also used to transport custom data to the group of devices. But currently it does not transport any data.
In this post I propose to detail the Monarch technology and then, in a second post to see how to use it with the first released devkit from Unabiz supporting Sigfox Monarch.
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