LoraWan Range testing

1

About to jump into doing some proof of concept and testing of LoraWan. Will be purchasing one of these as my gateway:

But was wondering …what would be a good client module that i can take on the road with me to test range/reception. I guess something that could report signal stats either on a screen or via LoraWan to a cloud service.

Would this be the go?

Or one of these on a PI?

Any suggestions?

2

Hi Arnold,

I would suggest making a TTN mapper with the Pycom LoPy4. @Graham has a nice setup for this, we’ll be turning it into a tutorial soon.

In the meantime, you can find Pycom’s TTN mapper project guide here:

This is probably the simplest way to determine signal strength and range, and it will be added to ttnmapper.org where will see the reception areas and signal strength at each location.

1 Like
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@Stephen Sounds great! Ill await the tutorial.

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@Stephen does core have a compatible GPS module as specified here : GitHub - ttn-be/ttnmapper: Implementation of a ttnmapper node for the LoPy MCU

For mapping, an additional GNSS (GPS) receiver (not part of LoPy) is required, which supports communication using NMEA-0183 and provides position data with the $GPGGA sentence. A connection to this receiver is expected on UART 1 (refer to LoPy pinout) with 9600 Baud; this may be adjusted in config.py . Additionally, an enable pin (defaults to P8 ) can be wired, which resets the receiver upon restart of the application. Setting DEBUG to True in config.py enables logging of the data received from the GNSS receiver to LoPy’s USB console.

5

Hi Arnold,

This GPS should work. We were able to pair the mapper with a cellphone and use the phone to both act as a modem for the Gateway’s TTN packets and share the GPS data for the Lopy4. The Tutorial will be up before too long!

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Awesome , thanks !

7

Thanks!

Would it be worth submitting a pull request to have this hardware referenced as an option & save this issue popping up over & over?

8

Hi Andrew,

We have a tutorial in work for this so full instructions will be up before too long :slight_smile:

2 Likes
9

Did this ever eventuate?

10

Stephen, did this tutorial ever eventuate?