Hi there,
Not new with arduino at all, I'm totally new with LoRa.
I plan to do a small systems at home that will use a couple of sensors in different areas.
I spotted and started to design a basic architecture in which I'll use multiple arduino mkr Wan 1310. Each one would have one. Or more sensors depending on distances.
Each mkr 1310 would be an iot thing for the cloud.
What lora gateway would you use?
I spotted the arduino one is discontinued
I have a couple of LoRa gateways a fixed The Things Gateway and a portable Things indoor gateway which I can carry on visits etc
you may find you do not require a gateway if there is local gateway which already covers your area
you appear to plan that all the MKRWAN 1310 modules will communicate with the LoRaWAN server
an alternative could be to use Lora point to point communication to a central node and that do a combined data upload to the cloud
do you have WiFi coverage on the site?
Hi @horace and thanks for your answer.
Actually, we have a wide old flat.
Wifi is ok except a bit weak in some corners. But ok.
No lorawan gateway around.
The idea is to consider all our small iot projects quite flexible. Lowering electricity consumption etc.
I checked the devices you mentioned. These are nice. I never used this kind of "opaque box". Are they just here for providing a bridge between lora communication and our wifi, thus our internet?
Couldn't I "just" do a DIY gateway from an arduino with lora capabilities + an ethernet interface directly connected to our network?
I'd probably consider arduino clout iot stuff. Seems easy to use their api to bring our data to custom web pages.
the Things Gatway plugs into Ethernet the indoor gateway connects to a WiFi network
both support LoRaWAN and are simple to setup
not with an Arduino as far as I am aware - a lot of computing power is required to support LoRaWAN - Lora point to point is OK
there is a Raspberry Pi gateway HAT - however, the cost of RPi + HAT is probably more than the Things Indoor gateway (apart from the complexity of setting the RPi up)
the MKRWAN 1310 is a good module but looks expensive (£50 in UK)
you could consider for your nodes using ESP32 modules (cost £7 in UK) which have onboard WiFi, Bluetooth Classic and BLE with plenty of IO capabilities - possibly using ESP-MESH for inter node communication
what IoT cloud service are you considering?
I use myDevices/cayenne for both LoRaWAN and WiFi uploads but there are plenty of alternatives (some free up to a set number of devices)
Edit: have a look at decimals-strings-and-lora which an example of a system of nodes distributed over an outside area using Lora point to point for communication
I have tried the RAK 7244, the discontinued Turta LoRaHat and the Dragino LoRa Hat on the RPi. The keepers of the RAK 7244 and the orphaned Turta LoRaHat will not make the tiny little change in software that would permit point to point communication
The Dragino hat works as a single channel gateway. I am trying to make that an NTP server before I get into making it a LoRa gateway.
I am using a TTGO T Beam as a single channel gateway. lesson learned early: no OLED on either end, and disable Serial.print when not troubleshooting. these things slow down LoRa packets, which increases the possibility of collisions
Thanks a lot.
I checked the gateway you mention. Seems very nice. Don't know if we can use it with arduino cloud iot.
Esp32. I don't know if I can program that as I do with arduino.
with LoRaWAN the gateway sends the packet to The Things Server V3 (or equivalent) which then forwards it to the target system you specified
you can use the Arduino IDE to program ESP32 modules - see installing-the-esp32-board-in-arduino-ide-windows-instructions
Last question about gateways
The things gateway is about 300€
The indoor one seems about 70€
Would you mind to tell me what differences between them?
I also understood that the gateway can be a global connection point for ALL devices around. Can we control this?
If you going to use TTN LoRaWAN, which is free for community use, part of the fair access policy you agree to is to allow other nodes to use your Gateway.
the indoor gateway is for a small home or office and is portable (you can connect it any WiFi network) - the Things Gateway is larger, connects to ethernet and an external antenna can be attached to extend its range
any LoRaWAN device in the area can connect