Could someone help me? i’ve got a smart citizen kit v2.1 and a LoRa Radio grove is there someone that adepted the aux port and got the sensors on a other network like TTN?
Thanks in advance
Hi Joachim,
If I understand correctly you’re trying to connect the LoRa to the AUX in order to TRANSMIT data, to get longer range Wifi connection. Is that correct?
Having messed around with a portion of the code a bit I think this might be challenging. The existing code is optimized to READ/RETRIEVE sensor data. However, perhaps I’ve just been looking in the section that does RETRIEVAL and another section contains modular sections for TRANSMITTING.
Hopefully someone can help out.
If you haven’t already I suggest you get some familiarity with the following:
- Fork and install/clone the repository locally.
- Get platformio working to build the image - and upload it to your device.
- Get familiar with the SCK SHELL.
Cheers,
Cyrille
I looked into this sort of thing then dropped it as too hard.
I looked at all possibilities for remote communication, including LTE, Lora and others. I found it very difficult to get information about available LoraWAN networks established in Taiwan. It looked like a pathway that would cost me a lot of time in research, so I did not pursue it.
I went for ubiquitous 4G LTE and tried to connect using Seeed 4G WIO LTE Board. But the Seeed documentation was very poor quality and it was impossible to upgrade the firmware for the integrated 4G LTE chip. If I got that working, then I had to modify SCK Firmware to support the 4G Comms Board. This is the same challenge you are looking at. The main issue is that currently the Data Board COMMS is not designed for the eventuality there will be an alternate pathway (instead of the ESP8266 Wi-Fi). The work to change it will be extensive. Your LoraWAN solution must include MQTT for communicating to the FabLabBCN Host system.
What I am doing instead is to use an external Wi-Fi - 4G LTE Gateway product made by D-Link;. That way there is no need to modify any SCK firmware to support the 4G communications method. All I do is connect the Wi-Fi on SCK to the Gateway’s Wi-Fi network.
Because I am using 4G LTE then this drives up the overall power consumption of the SCK system. I have to allow for 5V @ 1Amp. I has caused me to adopt a much bigger (more expensive) solar power and battery than I might have hoped.
Using LoraWAN is a great thing to do, as it will use a lot less power than 4G LTE.
Less Battery and Solar power needed.
But I suggest that you throw in a INA219 to measure your power consumption in real time.
Good luck if you can get it going.