LoRaWAN end-to-end
This workshop focuses on the use case of reporting data from an embedded device, to the cloud, and receive commands back.
The idea is that you have some embedded device, with a LoRa modem, periodically reporting data to the cloud, and occasionally receiving back commands to control the device.
Instead of implementing all the LoRa infrastructure ourselves, we re-use the infrastructure of The Things Network (TTN). However, we will want to process the data as part of our Drogue Cloud setup.
Pre-requisites
This workshop requires additional hardware, as we need an embedded device with a LoRa modem.
Additionally to the common pre-requisites, you will need:
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A Drogue Device supported development board and LoRa modem
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Coverage for "The Things Network"
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A "The Things Network" v3 account
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A publicly accessible Drogue IoT Cloud instance running version 0.5+
This workshop provides two backend implementations, one written in Java using Quarkus, and one written in JavaScript which uses Node.js. Depending on which backend is chosen one of the following will be required:
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Standard Java development tools: Java, Maven, Git
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Node.js version 16 or later
Supported embedded device & LoRa modem
Ideally, you have the STM32L0 discovery kit for LoRa (B-L072Z-LRWAN1). This kit has a Drogue Device supported STM32 board, and also has an SX1276 modem, for which Drogue Device has a LoRa driver.
You may also use a different Drogue Device supported board, adding the SX1276 using SPI. However, this means that you need to adapt the provided example firmware yourself.
The Things Network coverage
You can think of TTN as your LoRa network provider. When your device wants to send over the TTN LoRa network, you need to ensure that you have network coverage. So you can check if your region is already covered. The good thing with TTN is, if your region is not covered, you can take care of this yourself.
For this you will need to buy (or lend) a LoRa gateway. The LoRa gateway will open a local LoRa network cell, and connect via TCP/IP to the TTN LoRa network backend.
LoRa gateways come in various flavors. You can build one yourself with a Raspberry Pi, you can go all-in and buy an industrial, rugged version, mounting this to your roof and cover some km² with LoRa. Or, you can go on the cheap side and simply buy the The Things Indoor Gateway (TTIG).