hi, I am a newbie. I created a lora node using raspberry pi and an sx1276 modul. I want to do a signal strength test. basically i am looking for a way to see all gateways in the reach of my device and the rssi for each of them without having to send messages to each gateway. is there a way to do that?
Yes, LoRaWAN is a broadcast radio protocol. Not like WiFi where you have a one on one binding with an access point.
Just send one packet and in the TTN meta data of the received packet you will find the SNR and RSSI reported by every gateway that received the packet.
thank you! but this limits me to 10 packets a day right? i want to do a map so i might need to generate big amount of data
That limit is for traffic from gateway to node. For traffic from node to gateway you are allowed 30 seconds airtime. And every transmission by your node that is received by any TTN gateway will result in a packet in the backend that you can get over tcp (mqtt or http) where the signal data is available in the metadata.
Mapping by having a gateway send data to a node is not useful in LoRaWAN. (Traffic should be almost symmetrical and gateways should receive most of the time)
Using a node to receive all gateway transmissions is impossible. Gateways can transmit at 9 frequencies and your node can just receive at one. If you are in a region with a fixed RX2 frequency you could try receiving at that frequency, however gateways seldom transmit you would have to wait a fair amount of time to be able to receive any data.
1 Like
Does you node implement LoRaWan?
Does it properly receive and handle MAC commands from the network?
If not - if it’s a partial implementation, or if it simply uses barebones LoRa without implementing LoRaWan, then it’s not really within the scope of TTN and thus not really within the scope of this forum.
Given you probably used an existing codebase rather than writing something from scratch, the most effective thing to do at this point would be to state specifically what code you used.
pyLoRa does not support LoRaWAN, its point to point LoRa only.
Signal strength testing for TTN\LoRaWAN is normally done with applications that support LoRaWAN (suprise).
Such as TTN mapper
Monitoring a LoRaWAN server with a point to point LoRa settup is not really going to work.
1 Like
Lookup the TTN mapper stuff I provided the link for.
No idea if you can run it on a raspberry pi.
1 Like
That’s an atypical combination for two reasons: one, because LoRaWan is only for very low rate data flows while a pi-based system typically wants more, and two because the pi’s multitasking OS makes the required precise timing somewhat tricky.
Typically available LoRaWan node solutions for a pi run the actual LoRaWan stack on an MCU co-located in the radio module, and communicate at a higher level with software on the pi, often using AT commands or similar.
Something being a prototype does not isolate it from either physical reality or TTN rules
As explained, that is because this is an illogical configuration.
There have in the past been incomplete implementations, but those are no longer appropriate for use on TTN, as a node that does not correctly handle downlinks and respond to MAC commands creates a denial-of-service attack on the network.
If you want to use a pi, you likely need an MCU+radio module encapsulating its own proven LoRaWan stack. Otherwise you can run one of the possibly correct LoRaWan stacks on your own MCU.
Nobody who actually understands how to make LoRaWan work is likely to put time into implementing it on a pi, because that’s just not a sound choice of platform for the job, nor is LoRaWan typically sufficient for the sorts of needs which would involve a pi.