LoRa data being received as gibberish

Official Hardware Retired Esplora
1

Hi all

I am sending data from a RFM98 (attached to an ESP32) to another RFM98 (attached to a Raspberry Pi 4b). My Pi is acting as a gateway to Sondehub, which is done using lora-gateway from Pi In The Sky. The sending module is using arduino-lora.

The LoRa gateway on my Pi is receiving the transmission, but the output looks like gibberish. Here's an overview of my current sending code:

#include <SPI.h>
#include <LoRa.h>

int counter = 0;

void setup() {
  Serial.begin(9600);
  while (!Serial);
  LoRa.setPins(4, 2, 15);
  LoRa.setSignalBandwidth(125E3);
  LoRa.setCodingRate4(7);
  LoRa.setSpreadingFactor(7);
  LoRa.enableCrc();

  if (!LoRa.begin(434E6)) {
    Serial.println("Starting LoRa failed!");
    while (1);
  }
}

void loop() {
  Serial.print("Sending packet: ");
  Serial.println(counter);

  LoRa.beginPacket();
  LoRa.print("$$hadie,");
  LoRa.print(counter);
  LoRa.print(",10:42:10,53.786244,-2.290401,27799.3,1:10\n");
  LoRa.endPacket();

  counter++;

  delay(4000);
}

Here's how the string is being received on the gateway:

Screenshot 2023-03-29 at 15.20.14
Screenshot 2023-03-29 at 15.20.141652×1094 107 KB

According to the guide the gateway should instead by showing the string in the same format as when it leaves the transmitter. The data is not being uploaded to Sondehub as expected.

For a bit more context - when sending between my ESP32 and my Pi using other libraries like arduino-lora, RadioLib, and Adafruit RFM9x, everything works as expected.

2

So the LoRa modules are OK then.

Who supports the 'LoRa HAB Sondehub' software ?

Is there a reason your not enabling packet CRCs ?

3

Yeah the modules seem to be working ok outside of the context of this project.

The LoRa Sondehub gateway is supported by Dave Akerman, but as for the Sondehub system that the gateway should be transmitting to - I'm not sure.

I did originally have CRC enabled from the sender but I was turning it on and off to see if it helped my problem and didn't put it back in. I have just added the CRC back in though and still no change.

I was thinking it could be that I need to send my data over LoRa as a byte array, as opposed to a string? But I don't know enough to know if that will make any difference.

4

I have updated my question to include the newly added LoRa.enableCrc(); for reference.

5

This suggests otherwise;

https://www.daveakerman.com/?p=2987

Suggest you ask those that wrote and support the software, or maybe try receiving the packets on a local LoRa device to see what the actual transmitted packet looks like.

1 Like
6

For anyone else who may get this issue in the future, I solved it by contacting the repo maintainer and asking for assistance. He responded quickly and asked me to update my gateway.txt config file to use mode_0=1. Mine was set to mode_0=0 which was causing the problem.

7

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