LoRa Basics MAC on Arduino 33 Nano

gonzalo · August 26, 2019, 12:17pm

Is it possible to use the new-ish LoRa Basics MAC (https://github.com/lorabasics/basicmac) on Arduino boards? I had the impression that there was, but I see nothing in the docs or the repo.
Alternatively, is there any ongoing effort to port it to Arduino?

Cheers

kersing · August 26, 2019, 6:36pm

IIRC the memory footprint of it is too large.

gonzalo · August 26, 2019, 7:25pm

And how about the new Arduino 33 Nanos? In particular, I’m looking at the Arduino 33 Nano BLE Sense that has an nRF52480, 1MB Flash and 256KB of RAM. It would be a perfect “Getting started” node with all those sensors.

LoRaTracker · August 26, 2019, 7:37pm

> And how about the new Arduino 33 Nanos?

An interesting possibility I guess, do you know what the deep sleep curent of those new ‘Arduino’ modules is ?

BoRRoZ · August 26, 2019, 7:45pm

gonzalo · August 26, 2019, 8:03pm

Apparently, 4.5uA running Blink, according to Arduino’s blog.

Mbed also supports tickless mode; in this way, every time you write delay() in your code, the board will try to go in low power modes, knowing exactly when to wake up for the next scheduled event (or any external interrupt). We are able to achieve an impressive 4.5uA of lower consumption while running a plain old Blink on the Nano 33 BLE (a minimal hardware modification is needed to obtain this value but another blog post is coming).

The “minimal hardware mod” they mention hasn’t been documented, as far as I know.

kersing · August 26, 2019, 8:39pm

Should work easily. We just need someone to spend time on porting it to this target.

cjhdev · August 26, 2019, 11:22pm

You probably have to remove an LED.

LoRaTracker · August 27, 2019, 7:35am

Interesting.

So a board specifically designed for IOT applications needs a hardware modification to work at a low sleep current …

gonzalo · August 27, 2019, 7:55am

In all fairness, IOT does not have to be low power, even in LoRaWAN, Class C profile is actually recommended for mains powered devices.

gonzalo · August 27, 2019, 10:12am

I glanced at the code a bit, and it looks like they actually use LMIC, but before the port to Arduino…(?)

cjhdev · August 27, 2019, 10:49am

Assuming this is the core I can see a complete MBED system in there including the LoRaMacNode integration.

No idea if this is actually included in the build. If it is, this is a better option than LMIC based stuff.

gonzalo · August 27, 2019, 11:16am

Holy!!! Yes, I am pretty sure that’s the core with mbed, but I didn’t notice it included LoRaMacNode in there. I’ll try to see if I can make it work. Thanks!

KdG_IoT · March 17, 2020, 3:56pm

Hi,
I’m looking in to this as well. Trying to create a simple LoRa node with the RFM95 connected to a ARD nano 33 IoT.
Did you manage to get this working?

Regards,

Stijn

gonzalo · March 17, 2020, 4:37pm

Not yet, but in principle, it should work: https://github.com/arduino/ArduinoCore-nRF528x-mbedos/issues/42

bluejedi · March 18, 2020, 9:28am

Status of LoRa Basics MAC

LoRa Basic MAC (aka Basic MAC) has been deprecated by Semtech:

Please note that LoRaMAC-Node is replacing LoRa Basics MAC and should be used for new designs. In addition, in Q3 2020, Semtech will deliver a new software library to support the implementation of the LoRa Alliance’s LoRaWAN® specification with Modem functionalities.

If I understood correctly:
The ‘new software library’ will be based on ‘Soft Modem’ which will consist of a Soft Modem client (for end devices) and a set of Semtech backend services. The Soft Modem client will provide high-level functions that take care of much of the low-level stuff. Part of these functions may work independently while others will require use of the backend services.
The client will be developed for ARM and will be open sourced (so it can be ported by others). The services will be closed source but the specifications will be open.

Meanwhile @matthijskooijman has been busy porting Basic MAC to the Arduino framework.

See:

github.com/lorabasics/basicmac

How will collaboration work?

opened 06:22AM - 22 May 19 UTC

matthijskooijman

Great to see work is done to bring an LMIC-based stack back into development. I'…m curious how you are planning to structure the development of this stack? IBM used a fairly closed model, where development happened on an internal repository and only releases were published as zip files, without much interaction with or opportunity for contributions from the user community. Here, I see you're using github and have a public forum, which is great. However, I do see that the commit history is completely squashed, with just one commit per release (implying that there is an internal working repository, or that only one or two people are working on the code). What are the plans for this codebase? Are you expecting to work with the community, accepting pullrequests, publishing development code in separate commits when they are done (rather than only releases), maybe even share the maintainance with community members? For some background on my question, I created an Arduino port of LMIC years ago, which has become the defacto standard stack to use on (small) Arduino-based platforms. After the initial port, I have been hesitant to do a lot of further development on it, since I did not want the arduino port to deviate too much from the original ARM-based port. I had plans to unify both again (by doing development in the main version and allow automatically creating the Arduino version from that using a script), but never really gotten around to it (and I also held off on it recently when the lorawan minimouse stack and this basicmac stack were expected to be released). Now that basicmac is available, it looks like a great base to port to Arduino and I'd gladly see it become the new center of development for small LoRaWAN stacks, replacing LMIC at some point. However, I do not want to do a one-off port to Arduino (forking the repo and fragmenting development). But if this repository is not intended to facilitate community supported development, then it might not be so suitable to serve as such a center of development. Or if you're not planning to support (or even accept pullrequests to support) smaller (8-bit) platforms and project structures (e.g. Arduino does not use Makefiles but requires a specific library format).

and

wallano · March 19, 2021, 10:16am

Hi

which could be an easy way to provide LoRa connectivity to the Nano BLE sense?

Is there some example (ie. skect and wire connection) on how to send data from the arduino nano 33) through lorawan by using a shield or an uart module?
Actually I miss something due to my low expertise in C programming… maybe I have to implement serial communication between the Nano33 and the MKR shield device which sends (LoRa) the data received by Nano 33 (by serial?) ?

Do you know where I can find some example related to the connection of Nano33 with a radio module (i.e. SX1276) with MbedOS libs?

thank you all in advance

amintayebi · June 30, 2022, 10:46am

Good morning,
I was not sure to put my question in this page or create a new topic:
I am going to send temperature of a sensor via arduino nano iot33 and
dragino lora sheild (module) to TTN, but after uploading LMIC lib to
the board the port loose and board disconnect. but it works properly
with arduino uno. As I discovered there is problem with interrupt pins in arduino iot33 (nano 33 iot interrupts - #3 by Willy_1 - Nano 33 IoT - Arduino Forum). I checked user manual of it, it seems there is no interrupt pin while in arduino uno there is on pins 2,3. May I ask your helps,
Many thanks

LoRaTracker · June 30, 2022, 11:40am

The Arduino forum (a good place to ask Arduino questions) thread you linked to says of the IOT33;

“So I tested all digital pins and the result is: pins 2, 3, 9, 10, and 11 work as interrupt pin”

descartes · June 30, 2022, 12:06pm

Just to clarify, you have connected the Dragino LoRa Shield to the Arduino Nano IOT33?

LMIC does not use interrupts so it doesn’t matter - we traditionally use the ATmega328 interrupt pins 2 & 3 so that one day it may use interrupts if enabled.

So you are OK to use pins 2 & 3.