Setting up Multitech Conduit Gateway for TTN

Gateways MultiTech Gateways
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@johan @iikaw @thinginnovations I want to post a portion of a conversation with Brandon Bayer at Multi-Tech here, verbatim. It may help the TTN/AEP configuration process:

You guys are wanting an AEP model that’s easy to configure only as a packet forwarder gateway, correct?
If so, that’s easy for us to implement (we already have a proof of concept for it). It’ll basically be an option in the AEP GUI that behind the scenes will do the type of reconfiguration described in the mLinux forwarder conversion guide. You can then point AEP to any public LoRaWAN network. But, you still couldn’t use Node-RED to process LoRa packets.

If you want to process packets with Node-RED, say to only forward important events to TTN, it’s probably doable but a significantly larger problem. One possible way is to configure the Conduit’s on-board network server with the same settings as the TTN server. Then use Node-RED to process LoRa packets and send important ones to the TTN server via a REST API. Another way might be to develop some type of protocol for LoRa network servers to communicate with each other.

Here’s an update from Brandon: One quick way to send data to TTN from Node-RED would be MQTT:

With any network server settings, you can use Node-RED to publish received LoRa packets to any MQTT server, but I don’t know if TTN supports receiving data via MQTT.

That would be easiest and convenient. Possible?

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Thanks for posting @creatinghere. I see a huge value in using Node RED, not really on the gateway but in the cloud instead, after the routing, deduplication and decryption by open source TTN components.

If you do want to use Node RED on the gateway for other (local area network) purposes, you could indeed forward the raw LoRa packets using MQTT to a TTN router. That is indeed possible as we are offering a MQTT broker too.

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@johan Very happy to hear you’re a big proponent of Node-RED! Excited too that the post-decryption option might be supported! This particular configuration would allow us to "have our cake and eat it too — allow people to do some local area processing w/NodeRED AND manage some post / TTN processing as well.

And, I would like to use MQTT as it would mean I could route MQTT packet to your broker AND route them to my Mongodb for use in web applications!

Where do I get the TTN broker info?

All good news. Thanks so much!

Patrick

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I am posting details Friday late afternoon or evening. I’m presenting from 3 PM CEST at The Things Network Hackerspace our network architecture, including details on how to get the data as a developer. If you’re interested, we can set up a Hangout.

So the idea is indeed to offer Node RED as a TTN offered approach to work with decrypted data directly in a cloud environment. This allows you to shoot messages directly in your MongoDB or a cloud middleware platform.

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Very much want to. (You are 6 hours ahead, correct?) 9am EST.
— Let’s set up a hangout and I’ll attend.

Excellent!

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@johan I would like to attend too. I will check if @eduardo can participate on Friday too.

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@johan that is what we have here to start playing:

I will meet with @eduardo tomorrow to start the setup of the DIY gateway.

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@johan me too pls. let me know how to hangout

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Is that 2 MTAC-LORA cards for the Conduit? Thought it only supported a single one?

Andrew

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One we will use with the conduit gateway and the other one with Raspberry Pi.

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I ordered one as well for a DIY RPi Gateway. Will most likely have it running after the weekend.

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@johan: Any more info on Hangouts? I know you are very busy prepping.
— Re network: great progress/interesting details today.
Cheers.

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I will post the link tomorrow. My presentation will be at 3 PM CEST.

After the presentation, I will publish the slides with the routing architecture as proposed. This should be considered a request for comments document.

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Got it. Thanks. Exciting.

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Just had a call with Brandon from Multitech and we got the Conduit up and running with The Things Network. Just follow instructions from http://www.multitech.net/developer/software/lora/conduit-mlinux-convert-to-basic-packet-forwarder and configure it like this:

    "gateway_conf" :
    {
            "forward_crc_disabled" : true,
            "forward_crc_error" : false,
            "forward_crc_valid" : true,  
            "gateway_ID" : "<GATEWAY_EUI>",
            "keepalive_interval" : 12,
            "push_timeout_ms" : 120,
            "serv_port_down" : 1700,
            "serv_port_up" : 1700,
            "server_address" : "croft.thethings.girovito.nl",
            "stat_interval" : 20,
            "synch_word" : 52            
    }

Don’t forget to add your gateway EUI.

Now, we have a storage issue on our back-end. Turns out that not all data is being routed correctly and stored as it should. Also, the packet forwarder does not seem to report it’s status, so it’s not appearing on ttnstatus.org. But, we get the raw data and it is accessible now through the API.

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@johan thanks. It looks great. We will test it soon. One more question. We will use the Multitech mDot as the node to test. Is there any TTN specific firmware that needs to be loaded in the mDot so that it can be used in TTN or it is just the case to follow the instructions contained in the Multitech development guide of the mDot ?

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Hi @KarlNL. Thanks for your tips. Regarding the mDot platform what we need is only the AT firmware or do we need to change or load any other TTN specific program/firmare in the mDot to make it sending data to TTN server through the MT Conduit Gateway with the LORA mCard?

If you want to quickly get started using the mDot with the factory AT firmware, see the Factory Firmware section of this page. If you want to use the mDot library and write your own application, see the Example Programs and mDot Library sections.

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I’m hoping to setup an mDot to use TTN once I get my Conduit reconfigured.
I think you only need the public option set and enter the correct network name and key. The mDot should then be able to join TTN.
I only use the AT command firmware in a limited way for testing as I primarily develop using the mbed environment. There are more examples now than when I originally started looking at the mDot so this should help.

Cheers

Andrew

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Got Conduit reconfigured, so how do I actually tell if its forwarding to TTN? Nothing shows up on the list of gateways if I use the api call. Does someone need the EUI to register it in the system?

thanks

Andrew

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Hi @thinginnovations, I also experienced that the forwarder is not emitting gateway statuses. That’s why it doesn’t appear there.

Do you see data from your nodes in the API?