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(work in progress)
MoRa is a repository including software, hardware configuration and documentation related to the expermenting activities about LoRa/LoRaWAN technologu carried out in Modena by Davide Gariselli and Alberto Trentadue.
Repository's resources can be used to implement demos and/or kick-starters for further projects using LoRaWAN as digital communication infrastructure for the Internet of Things (IoT).
Very short introduction to LoRa and LoRaWAN.
MoRa development is aimed to deliver one of the possible implementations of a communication infrastructure for the IoT using LoRaWAN as network and LoRa as last hop communication technique.
The Things Network (TTN) project is an authoritative example of LoRaWAN infrastructure implemented world-wide in Open Source and MoRa holds it as reference for many fundamental aspects.
However, we decided to implement (for now) an infrastructure independently from TTN in order be able to study in detail and experiment in first person some LoRaWAN network low-level aspects and issues that are mainly already solved and thus hidden by TTN's software components. Nevertheless, We foresee that MoRa should integrate with TTN in the next future to actively contribute to TTN's objectives fulfillment which we consider very important and worthy for its motivation, its practices and the effects they have in the IoT development for communities.
Ours is a minimalist but complete LoRaWAN network implementation and therefore it follows its standard architecture.
Our implementation includes a node, a gateway and Network Server having both LoRa Server and "Application Server" functions.
As first test gateway we have chosen to follow the design realized by the "The Things Network" work group in Zurich (Switzerland) - the ZH-TTN. They have published the complete project on their Github wiki.
Our Gateway #1 components are:
- Raspberry Pi3 as host controller.
- The IMST IC880a LoRa concentrator - IC880a IMST web site. The IC880a concentrator is the cheapest solution of its service capability, having 8 LoRa channels managed at same time, thus suitable for on-the field, multiple application employment. There are indeed several cheaper solutions as LoRaWAN gateways, e.g. working on single channel of operation.
- The connection backplane between Raspberry and IC880a, developed by one of the TTN-ZH team members, Gonzalo Casas, and available on Tindie
- 868MHz antenna - any antenna will be ok provided that it is designed for the 868MHZ ISM band. The antenna needs a adaptation cable to be connected to the micro-FL connector on the IC880a card.
- An electrical outdoor IP67 box to include all the listed devices. We chose to take a fairly bigger SCAME box in order to possibly allocate more hardware in a possible on-the field deployment.
The integration and installation guide is fully on the TTN-ZH wiki, so please follow that carefully. We have assigned to the Raspberry Pi a fixed IP address to the ETH interface (IP cable), in order to be sure that we can connect the card at any time for maintenance, without having to search for its IP address. Even if there is possibility to connect the RPi3 using its WiFi interface, it is not recommended because it may generate unwanted radio frequency interference so close to the IC880a LoRa radio.
