What is the protocol between the gateway and the server application?

Application Development
1

Hi,
I have written a TCP/IP server many years ago and have many connections from various sensors (using GPRS/3G/WiFI etc…). I want to add a lorawan gateway to it, anyone point me in the direction where to get information on how to communicate with it from my server app?

Many Thanks
Scott

2

Protocol wise, a LoRaWAN gateway doesn’t understand LoRaWAN, it just provides a remote antenna to the component which does, the LoRaWAN network server.

So if you want to use LoRaWAN, and particularly if you want to use TTN (which is really the only thing on topic on this forum), then it’s not the gateway you should be interacting with, but the TTN servers.

Please see the documentation on the various ways of getting your data from them.

3

To clarify, you want YOUR server to be able to receive data from a LoRaWAN gateway?

4

Hi
Yes exactly. I have hundreds of tcp/ip connections currently on my server , and want to add comms from a gateway, so my server application can get data from my nodes. I don’t want to design my own gateway , I was hoping to use an off the shelf one.

Many thanks
Scott

5

That requires you implement a LoRaWAN network server, join server and application server on your server because the gateway doesn’t get the data (it sort of does but can’t handle decryption nor the LoRaWAN protocol).
It is easier to have a gateway connect to TTN and have your server pull it from TTN using MQTT or HTTP integrations as @cslorabox already mentioned. Check the TTN documentation for details on what is required. (Hint, HTTP scales better at TTN end so is the preferred integration method)

6

To really underline this before it becomes a protracted thread before you realise the scale of the task:

Half a dozen full time staff members at TTI have been working on this for the last two years. The good news is that the code is all open source:

You can get the specs here:

7

Hi
That sounds a better idea , I will look at the docs

Many thanks
Scott

8

@scottsmith Not the 1st iteration of this so in reality for ~6 years!.. no small task - so just point your server at TTN and pull data from there as already advised…

9

Hi
I’m thinking of doing that , will save me a lot of hassle

Thanks
Scott