LoRa Basics™ Station using balena.io with sx1301, sx1302 and sx1303 LoRa concentrators

This project is deprecated! You can see the balena basicstation updated here

https://github.com/xoseperez/basicstation

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This project deploys a LoRaWAN gateway with Basics™ Station Packet Forward protocol with balena. It runs on a Raspberry Pi (3/4) or balenaFin with sx1301, sx1302 and sx1303 SPI LoRa concentrators (e.g. RAK833, RAK2245, RAK2287, RAK5146, Seeed WM1302 and IMST iC880a among others).

Introduction

Deploy a The Things Stack (TTS v3) LoRaWAN gateway running the Basics™ Station Semtech Packet Forward protocol. We are using balena.io and RAK to reduce fricition for the LoRa gateway fleet owners. This project has been tested with The Things Network (TTN v2), The Things Stack (TTS v3) and The Things Industries (TTI) as well.

The Basics™ Station protocol enables the LoRa gateways with a reliable and secure communication between the gateways and the cloud and it is becoming the standard Packet Forward protocol used by most of the LoRaWAN operators.

Getting started

Hardware

• Raspberry Pi 0, 3/4 or balenaFin
• SD card in case of the RPi 0/3/4

LoRa Concentrators (SPI)

Disclaimer: At the moment the basicstation project is not compatible with USB LoRa concentrators. Contributions open :)

• SX1301

• IMST iC880a
• RAK 2245 pi hat
• RAK833

• SX1302

• RAK 2287 Concentrator with RAK 2287 Pi Hat
• Seeed WM1302 with the Pi Hat (this model is compatible with the RAK2287 Pi Hat as well).

• SX1303

• RAK 5146 with RAK2287 Pi Hat.

Software

• A The Things Stack V3 account here
• A balenaCloud account (sign up here)
• balenaEtcher

Once all of this is ready, you are able to deploy this repository following instructions below.

Deploy the code

Via Balena Deploy

Running this project is as simple as deploying it to a balenaCloud application. You can do it in just one click by using the button below:

Follow instructions, click Add a Device and flash an SD card with that OS image dowloaded from balenaCloud. Enjoy the magic 🌟Over-The-Air🌟!

Via Balena-Cli

If you are a balena CLI expert, feel free to use balena CLI.

• Sign up on balena.io
• Create a new application on balenaCloud.
• Clone this repository to your local workspace.
• Using Balena CLI, push the code with balena push <application-name>
• See the magic happening, your device is getting updated 🌟Over-The-Air🌟!

Configure the Gateway

Define your MODEL

The model is defined depending on the version of the LoRa concentrator: SX1301, SX1302 and SX1303.

In case that your LoRa concentrator is a RAK2287 it is using SX1302. If the concentrator is the RAK2245 or iC880a it uses the SX1301. It's important to change the balenaCloud Device Variable with the correct MODEL. The default MODEL on the balena Application is the SX1301.

1. Go to balenaCloud dashboard and get into your LoRa gateway device site.
2. Click "Device Variables" button on the left menu and change the MODEL variable to SX1302 if needed.

That enables a fleet of LoRa gateways with both (e.g.) RAK2245 and RAK2287 together under the same app.

Define your REGION and TTN STACK VERSION

From now it's important to facilitate the TTN_STACK_VERSION that you are going to use: 3 (The Things Stack v3) or 2 (The Things Network or TTN V2). The default variable is set into 3(V3).

Before starting, also check the TTN_REGION. It needs to be changed if your region is not Europe. In case you use version 3, the European version is eu1 by default. Check here the LoRa frequencies by country.

With these variables TTN_REGION and TTN_STACK_VERSION the TC_URI will be generated automatically. In case that you want to point to another specific TC_URI, feel free to add this Device Variable on the balenaCloud.

Get the EUI of the LoRa Gateway

The LoRa gateways are manufactured with a unique 64 bits (8 bytes) identifier, called EUI, which can be used to register the gateway on The Things Network and The Things Stack. To get the EUI from your board it’s important to know the Ethernet MAC address of it (this is not going to work if your device does not have Ethernet port).

The EUI will be the Ethernet mac address (6 bytes), which is unique, expanded with 2 more bytes (FFFE). This is a standard way to increment the MAC address from 6 to 8 bytes.

To get the EUI, copy the TAG of the device which will be generated automatically when the device gets provisioned on balenaCloud for first time. Be careful when you copy the tag, as other characters will be copied.

If that does not work, go to the terminal box and click "Select a target", then “HostOS”. Once you are inside the shell, type:

cat /sys/class/net/eth0/address | sed -r 's/[:]+//g' | sed -e 's#\(.\{6\}\)\(.*\)#\1fffe\2#g'

Copy the result and you are ready to register your gateway with this EUI.

Configure your The Things Stack gateway (V3)

1. Sign up at The Things Stack console.
2. Click "Go to Gateways" icon.
3. Click the "Add gateway" button.
4. Introduce the data for the gateway.
5. Paste the EUI from the balenaCloud tags.
6. Complete the form and click Register gateway.
7. Once the gateway is created, click "API keys" link.
8. Click "Add API key" button.
9. Select "Grant individual rights" and then "Link as Gateway to a Gateway Server for traffic exchange ..." and then click "Create API key".
10. Copy the API key generated. and bring it to balenaCloud as TC_KEY.

Configure your The Things Network gateway (V2)

1. Sign up at The Things Network console.
2. Click Gateways button.
3. Click the "Register gateway" link.
4. Check “I’m using the legacy packet forwarder” checkbox.
5. Paste the EUI from the balenaCloud tag or the Ethernet mac address of the board (calculated above)
6. Complete the form and click Register gateway.
7. Copy the Key generated on the gateway page.

Balena LoRa Basics Station Service Variables

Once successfully registered:

1. Go to balenaCloud dashboard and get into your LoRa gateway device site.
2. Click "Device Variables" button on the left menu and add these variables.

Alternativelly, you can also set any of them at application level if you want it to apply to all devices in you application.

Common Variables

Variable Name	Value	Description	Default
GW_GPS	STRING	Enables GPS	true or false
GW_RESET_PIN	INT	Pin number that resets (Raspberry Pi header number)	11
GW_RESET_GPIO	INT	GPIO number that resets (Broadcom pin number, if not defined, it's calculated based on the GW_RESET_PIN)	17
TTN_STACK_VERSION	INT	If using TTN, version of the stack. It can be either 2 (TTNv2) or 3 (TTS)	3
TTN_REGION	STRING	Region of the TTN server to use	eu1 (when using TTN v2 use eu)
TC_TRUST	STRING	Certificate for the server	Automatically retrieved from LetsEncryt based on the TTN_STACK_VERSION value
MODEL	STRING	SX1301 or SX1302	SX1301
TC_URI	STRING	basics station TC URI to get connected.
EUI_ADDRESS	STRING	In case you use Raspberry Pi Zero without eth0 you can use this to generate the EUI from wlan0 instead of another network interface. You will need to add wlan0

The Things Stack (TTS) Specific Variables (V3)

Remember to generate an API Key and copy it. It will be the TC_KEY.

The TC_URI and TC_TRUST values are automatically populated to use wss://eu1.cloud.thethings.network:8887 if you set TTN_STACK_VERSION to 3.If your region is not EU you can set it using TTN_REGION. At the moment there is only one server avalable is eu1.

Variable Name	Value	Description	Default
TC_KEY	STRING	Unique TTN Gateway Key	(Key pasted from TTN console)

(Deprecated) The Things Network (TTNv2) Specific Variables (V2)

Remember to copy the The Things Network gateway KEY and ID to configure your board variables on balenaCloud.

The GW_IDand GW_KEY variables have been generated automatically when the Application has been created with the Deploy with Balena button. Replace the values with the KEY and ID from the TTN console.

The TC_URI and TC_TRUST values are automatically populated to use wss://lns.eu.thethings.network:443 if you set TTN_STACK_VERSION to 2. If your region is not EU you can set it using TTN_REGION, Possible values are eu, us, in and au.

Variable Name	Value	Description	Default
GW_ID	STRING	TTN Gateway EUI	(EUI)
GW_KEY	STRING	Unique TTN Gateway Key	(Key pasted from TTN console)

At this moment your LoRaWAN gateway should be up and running. Check on the TTN or TTS console if it shows the connected status.

Troubleshoothing

It's possible that on the TTN Console the gateway appears as Not connected if it's not receiving any LoRa message. Sometimes the websockets connection among the LoRa Gateway and the server can get broken. However a new LoRa package will re-open the websocket between the Gateway and TTN or TTI. This issue should be solved with the TTN v3.

Feel free to introduce issues on this repo and contribute with solutions.

TTNv2 to TTS migration

Initial state: one of more devices connected to TTNv2 stack (The Things Network).

Proposed procedure:

1. Create the gateways at TTS using the very same Gateway ID (Gateway EUI)
2. Create a TC_KEY variable on each device with the TTN Gateway Key pasted from the TTI console.
3. Set the TTN_STACK_VERSION variable to 3, either at application level or per device

Now you can move them from TTS to TTNv2 back and forth (using the TTN_STACK_VERSION variable) as you wish as long as the gateways are defined on both platforms and the TC_KEY and GW_KEY do not change.

Attribution

• This is an adaptation of the Semtech Basics Station repository. Documentation here.
• This is in part working thanks of the work of Jose Marcelino from RAK Wireless, Xose Pérez from Allwize and Marc Pous from balena.io.
• This is in part based on excellent work done by Rahul Thakoor from the Balena.io Hardware Hackers team.