Install Lorix One Gateway in 1 hour

Home Labs Stories Install Lorix One Gateway in 1 hour

by Charles-Henri Hallard

ABOUT THIS STORY

Posted on June 7, 2017

#Gateway #ttn #lorawan #lorix #external #wifx #ch2i #lora

Beginner

1 Hour

15 people like this

Contact author Discuss on forum

Introduction

I ordered the new amazing Lorix One gateway and I was reading a little bit the documentation before I received this new toy on my desktop, Reading confirmed me that I could install and configure this GW with TTN in less than one hour, check this lab, it's done ;)

Unpacking

I ordered few days ago two Lorix One gateways from Wifx for testing. Shipped the day I ordered, even if it was 5PM, good point for you guys at Wifx, you're fast, very fast.

So, I ordered the outdoor version IP65. Since price is the same than indoor and with a better antenna gain, I didn't had any hesitation. This price policy looks strange but, never mind, I took the one that could be placed anywhere.

Unfortunately even if it was shipped with Intl Priority on Wednesday, I had it in hand only next Wednesday (Switzerland to France). Of course Monday was a day off in France and Tuesday, they tried to deliver it, but I need to pay duties taxes (220€) and they were not able to give me a invoice indicating VAT (20% in France). So I told them, I need an Invoice for what I pay. As I'm a company, I can get back VAT but need an invoice. So they gave me the packet with invoice on Wednesday (next day), thanks to French Postal service. always efficient, but let's be cool with them, this time the packed was not lost ...

Packaging is simple but good, with sticker about region and MAC address of the device on the package so you can prepare your Device ID and/or Network DHCP reservation if you want without opening and configuring the device, all is on the box.

Talking about the box, let's open it:

Good packaging, a place is left, may be the one for indoor 2dBi antenna, this outdoor version one has 4.15 dBi antenna. Package contains all you need to get started (except the network cable)

24V DC power (500mA Max)
POE Injector
4.154 dBi Outdoor antenna
the LORIX One Gateway

Once out of the box it looks like this, as you can see with power adapter, the gateway is really small.

If you need to have a better size vision, I took a picture with Raspberry PI and Lopy near, as you can see, in term of full LoRaWAN Gateway, it's the smallest I ever seen.

System and network configuration

When getting it out of the box, default LORIX One network static config is as follow:

Static IP Address : 192.168.1.50
Network Mask : 255.255.255.0
Network Gateway : 192.168.1.1

So you guys, this means if your network is not in 192.168.1.x net you won't be able to connect to the device. I was lucky my net is 192.168.1.0 but my gateway is 192.168.1.254 so by default LORIX One was not able to go to Internet but don't worry, this is not needed to configure the device.

If you can't connect because your network is not the same, you have 2 options:

Use a USB cable to connect from your computer to LORIX One and then use a terminal software (CoolTerm, Putty, ....) to connect using serial. (USB connector of LORIX One act as a USB Serial converter. It's like you're connected directly onto the console. See section 7 of user manual.
Connect the LORIX One to a Hub/Switch with your computer Ethernet wired on the same switch and configure your computer IP address to be a static one like 192.168.1.10 for example. Then you'll be able to connect with SSH to 192.168.1.50 but your computer will not have Internet access anymore (except if you're connected to it over WiFi).

My 2 cents, avoid headache, use the 1st one of the option.

In case of network access (my case) once LORIX device is accessible (answer to ping 192.168.1.50) go connect with ssh (user name is admin, not root), the default password is lorix4u

ssh admin@192.168.1.50

Ok I'm in, let's look at some interesting things

Great filesystem is UBIFS, like this one, and still plenty (relative) flash available, Linux kernel is 4.4

First thing, change default password for admin user with the following command

admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ passwd
Changing password for admin
Old password:
Enter the new password (minimum of 5 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
New password:
Re-enter new password:
passwd: password changed.
admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ sudo passwd

Then change the default root password

admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ sudo passwd
Password:
Changing password for root
Enter the new password (minimum of 5 characters)
Please use a combination of upper and lower case letters and numbers.
New password:
Re-enter new password:
passwd: password changed.
admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $

Now change the hostname by

admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ sudo nano /etc/hostname

I changed sama5d4-lorix-one by ttn-gw05 but name is your choice, exit editor with CTRL-X and answer yes to save.

Then I changed .bashrc file to have great colored prompt and some basic aliases

admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ nano ~/.bashrc

Here my new .bashrc file


# ~/.bashrc: executed by bash(1) for non-login shells.
#export PS1='\h:\w\$ '
export PS1='\[\033[01;32m\]\u@\h\[\033[00m\]:\[\033[01;34m\]\w \$\[\033[00m\] '
umask 022
# You may uncomment the following lines if you want `ls' to be colorized:
export LS_OPTIONS='--color=auto'
eval `dircolors`
alias ls='ls $LS_OPTIONS'
alias ll='ls $LS_OPTIONS -l'
alias l='ls $LS_OPTIONS -lA'
# Some more alias to avoid making mistakes:
# alias rm='rm -i'
# alias cp='cp -i'
# alias mv='mv -i'

Ok now you need to change your network configuration to fit you needs, for my example I switched Lorix One IP Address to DHCP and done a reservation to my router, once again, this step depends on your network configuration.

So I edited the file /etc/network/interface' commented the static configuration and set up to DHCP.

Take care, if you setup DHCP and not done a reservation on your DHCP server (or router), you'll need to go to your router DHCP list to see the new device address (new hostname name will appears).

New file looks like,

# /etc/network/interfaces -- configuration file for ifup(8), ifdown(8)
# The loopback interface
auto lo
iface lo inet loopback
# Main wired interface
auto eth0
iface eth0 inet dhcp
#iface eth0 inet static
#    address 192.168.1.50
#    netmask 255.255.255.0
#    gateway 192.168.1.1
#    dns-nameservers 192.168.1.1

now reboot and cross your fingers

admin@sama5d4-lorix-one:~ $ sudo reboot; logout

I reserved the IP address of 192.168.1.25 on my router and after reboot I was able to connect to new IP with new password.

I noticed looking into log file that date was not correct, so I first tried to set my timezone (France) and usually on Debian I just do sudo dpkg-reconfigure tzdata but here it does not work (it yocto distrib) and I was unable to find the command. So I've done it old school, by hand since local time is from the file /etc/localtime witch is a symbolic link to your localtime. All time are in folder /usr/share/zoneinfo find your file zone there mine is /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris

admin@ttn-gw05:/usr/share/zoneinfo $ date
Thu Jun  8 06:06:48 UTC 2017

Set new link (in my case Europe/Paris)

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ sudo rm /etc/localtime
admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ sudo ln -s /usr/share/zoneinfo/Europe/Paris /etc/localtime
admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ date
Thu Jun  8 08:09:48 CEST 2017
admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $

Great time is now ahead of 2 hours, but still wrong, real time is 1H20 ahead, so deamon (ntpd) that has in charge to sync date time over Internet does not seem to works.

Let's see what's the problem

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ date
Thu Jun  8 08:20:25 CEST 2017

Real time here is 9H32, WTF ? what's the ntpd deamon is doing ?

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ sudo /etc/init.d/ntpd status
Password:
/usr/sbin/ntpd is stopped

Ok it does nothing, it's not started, makes sense it does not work. So let's start it!

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ sudo /etc/init.d/ntpd start
Starting ntpd: done

And see results

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ date
Thu Jun  8 09:34:30 CEST 2017

Magic, it works, why it was not started ? Let's force to start at boot!

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ update-rc.d ntpd defaults
 System startup links for /etc/init.d/ntpd already exist.

Oupss, it was already set ? reboot the LORIX to be sure may be I've done so much command that I may broke it in my session, so restart fresh

admin@ttn-gw05:/etc $ sudo reboot; logout

After reboot, let's see this point

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ date
Thu Jun  8 09:46:49 CEST 2017
admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/ntpd status
Password:
/usr/sbin/ntpd (pid 936) is running...

Ok all is fine, wrong alert, not for nothing, if you wasn't aware, now you learned how to setup timezone and check clock sync.

Just curious, let's see how is system memory/cpu issuing a

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ top

top - 09:50:29 up 4 min,  1 user,  load average: 0.51, 0.34, 0.14
Tasks:  67 total,   1 running,  66 sleeping,   0 stopped,   0 zombie
%Cpu(s):  0.3 us,  0.7 sy,  0.0 ni, 99.0 id,  0.0 wa,  0.0 hi,  0.0 si,  0.0 st
KiB Mem :   123944 total,    99784 free,     9624 used,    14536 buff/cache
KiB Swap:        0 total,        0 free,        0 used.   106240 avail Mem
  PID USER      PR  NI    VIRT    RES    SHR S %CPU %MEM     TIME+ COMMAND
  979 admin     20   0    3008   1428   1112 R  1.0  1.2   0:00.21 top
    1 root      20   0    1712    704    636 S  0.0  0.6   0:01.35 init
    2 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kthreadd
    3 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.13 ksoftirqd/0
    4 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0
    5 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/0:0H
    6 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kworker/u2:0
    7 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kdevtmpfs
    8 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.03 kworker/u2:1
   26 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 writeback
   28 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kworker/u2:2
  171 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 crypto
  173 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 bioset
  175 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kblockd
  245 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.01 kworker/0:1
  326 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 rpciod
  333 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 kswapd0
  334 root      20   0       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 fsnotify_mark
  335 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 nfsiod
  381 root       0 -20       0      0      0 S  0.0  0.0   0:00.00 bioset

Wooow 100Mb of free memory on 128Mb total, this Yocto distrib is really optimized, like it.

TTN configuration

Once your LORIX is connected to your network and Internet, it's time to get TTN backend configuration working.

For this just stop the current LORIX cloud manager (default Loriot) with provided script clouds-manager.sh

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ sudo /etc/init.d/clouds-manager.sh stop
Password:
Stopping cloud ttn... stopped /opt/lorix/clouds/ttn/poly_pkt_fwd (pid 909)
timeout during wait for stop
stopped /opt/lorix/clouds/ttn/poly_pkt_fwd (pid 909)
done.

Configure to TTN with same script but with configure switch. Select Yes to autostart and TTN to cloud app

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ /etc/init.d/clouds-manager.sh configure
==========================================
| LORIX One clouds manager configuration |
==========================================
Actual configuration:
  autostart=true
      cloud=ttn
Do you want to enable autostart at boot time?
[Yes|No]
 > Yes
Which cloud app. do you want to use ?
[loriot|packet-forwarder|ttn]
 > ttn
New configuration:
  autostart=true
      cloud=ttn
admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ ^C

Now it's time to configure this LORIX TTN gateway. go to dedicated TTN folder

cd /opt/lorix/clouds/ttn/

If you have the indoor antenna (and only in this case), change global config (default config is for 4dB antenna) by

admin@ttn-gw05:/opt/lorix/clouds/ttn $ cp EU_global_conf_2dBi_indoor.json global_conf.json

To be honest, I was not aware that configuration needed to be changed depending on antenna type, very interesting, if anyone knows why and how, just please drop a note ;)

Ok now save the config file /opt/lorix/clouds/ttn/local_conf.json and then change it

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ cp local_conf.json local_conf.json.org
admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ nano cp local_conf.json

Change email, gateway ID if you need and set the `fake_GPS` to false, we can position the gateway later on in the TTN Dashboard for gateways

Here is my new config file

{
/* Put there parameters that are different for each gateway (eg. pointing one gateway to a test server while the others stay in production) */
/* Settings defined in global_conf will be overwritten by those in local_conf */
    "gateway_conf": {
        "gateway_ID": "0005fcc23d0de8bd",
        "servers": [
            {
                "server_address": "router.eu.thethings.network",
                "serv_port_up": 1700,
                "serv_port_down": 1700,
                "serv_enabled": true
            }
        ],
        "fake_gps": false,
        "ref_latitude": 10,
        "ref_longitude": 20,
        "ref_altitude": -1,
        "contact_email": "contact@ch2i.eu",
        "description": "ch2i-gw05-lorixone"
    }
}

I just changed my gateway__ID, contact_mail and description. My gateway ID is always the GW number (remember my hostname, ttn-gw05 so GW number 5). So ID are nnnnMACADDRESS where first 4 digits is GW number, and the other the MAC Address. It's my convention, you can leave default one if you want. It's just a matter on knowing and identify my gateways.

Oh, save back your config file, because any command opkg upgrade will reset to default (trust me I've done the error) by downloading new config file.

admin@ttn-gw05:~ $ cp local_conf.json local_conf.json.ch2i

May be I could also set the config filename in startup scripts, may be another time.

So as cloud services are stopped, I wanted to see what is the output once launching the poly packed forwarder so I hand started it by


admin@ttn-gw05:/opt/lorix/clouds/ttn $ sudo ./poly_pkt_fwd
Password:
*** Poly Packet Forwarder for Lora Gateway ***
Version: 2.1.0
*** Lora concentrator HAL library version info ***
Version: 3.1.0; Options: native;
***
INFO: Little endian host
INFO: found global configuration file global_conf.json, parsing it
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named SX1301_conf, parsing SX1301 parameters
INFO: lorawan_public 1, clksrc 1
INFO: Configuring TX LUT with 16 indexes
INFO: radio 0 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 867500000, RSSI offset -164.000000, tx enabled 1
INFO: radio 1 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 868500000, RSSI offset -164.000000, tx enabled 0
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 0>  radio 1, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 1>  radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 2>  radio 1, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 3>  radio 0, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 4>  radio 0, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 5>  radio 0, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 6>  radio 0, IF 200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 7>  radio 0, IF 400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora std channel> radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 250000 Hz bw, SF 7
INFO: FSK channel> radio 1, IF 300000 Hz, 125000 Hz bw, 50000 bps datarate
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named gateway_conf, parsing gateway parameters
INFO: gateway MAC address is configured to FCC23DFFFE0DE8BD
INFO: Found 2 servers in array.
INFO: Server 0 configured to "127.0.0.1", with port up "1680" and port down "1681"
INFO: Server 1 configured to "iot.semtech.com", with port up "1680" and port down "1680"
INFO: Found 5 system calls in array.
INFO: System command 0: "df -m"
INFO: System command 1: "free -h"
INFO: System command 2: "uptime"
INFO: System command 3: "who -a"
INFO: System command 4: "uname -a"
INFO: monitor hostname or IP address is configured to "127.0.0.1"
INFO: monitor port is configured to "2008"
INFO: ghost hostname or IP address is configured to "127.0.0.1"
INFO: ghost port is configured to "1918"
INFO: downstream keep-alive interval is configured to 10 seconds
INFO: statistics display interval is configured to 30 seconds
INFO: upstream PUSH_DATA time-out is configured to 100 ms
INFO: packets received with a valid CRC will be forwarded
INFO: packets received with a CRC error will NOT be forwarded
INFO: packets received with no CRC will NOT be forwarded
INFO: GPS serial port path is configured to "/dev/ttyAMA0"
INFO: SSH path is configured to "/usr/bin/ssh"
INFO: SSH port is configured to 22
INFO: HTTP port is configured to 80
INFO: NGROK path is configured to "/usr/bin/ngrok"
INFO: Reference latitude is configured to 10.000000 deg
INFO: Reference longitude is configured to 20.000000 deg
INFO: Reference altitude is configured to -1 meters
INFO: GPS is enabled
INFO: Using fake GPS coordinates instead of real.
INFO: Upstream data is enabled
INFO: Downstream data is enabled
INFO: Ghoststream data is disabled
INFO: Radiostream data is enabled
INFO: Statusstream data is enabled
INFO: Beacon is disabled
INFO: Monitor is disabled
INFO: Platform configured to "LORIX One"
INFO: Contact email configured to "operator@gateway.tst"
INFO: Description configured to "Update me"
INFO: found local configuration file local_conf.json, parsing it
INFO: redefined parameters will overwrite global parameters
INFO: local_conf.json does not contain a JSON object named SX1301_conf
INFO: local_conf.json does contain a JSON object named gateway_conf, parsing gateway parameters
INFO: gateway MAC address is configured to 0005FCC23D0DE8BD
INFO: Found 1 servers in array.
INFO: Server 0 configured to "router.eu.thethings.network", with port up "1700" and port down "1700"
INFO: downstream keep-alive interval is configured to 60 seconds
INFO: statistics display interval is configured to 3600 seconds
INFO: packets received with a valid CRC will be forwarded
INFO: packets received with a CRC error will NOT be forwarded
INFO: packets received with no CRC will NOT be forwarded
INFO: Reference latitude is configured to 10.000000 deg
INFO: Reference longitude is configured to 20.000000 deg
INFO: Reference altitude is configured to -1 meters
INFO: GPS is enabled
INFO: Using fake GPS coordinates instead of real.
INFO: Upstream data is enabled
INFO: Downstream data is enabled
INFO: Ghoststream data is disabled
INFO: Radiostream data is enabled
INFO: Statusstream data is enabled
INFO: Beacon is disabled
INFO: Monitor is disabled
INFO: Contact email configured to "contact@ch2i.eu"
INFO: Description configured to "ch2i-gw05-lorixone"
INFO: Successfully contacted server router.eu.thethings.network
INFO: [main] Starting the concentrator
INFO: [main] concentrator started, radio packets can now be received.
INFO: [down] Thread activated for all server router.eu.thethings.network
INFO: [up] Thread activated for all servers.
INFO: [down] for server router.eu.thethings.network PULL_ACK received in 32 ms
INFO: [up] PUSH_ACK for server router.eu.thethings.network received in 32 ms
^C
##### 2017-06-07 14:02:25 GMT #####
### [UPSTREAM] ###
# RF packets received by concentrator: 1
# CRC_OK: 100.00%, CRC_FAIL: 0.00%, NO_CRC: 0.00%
# RF packets forwarded: 1 (16 bytes)
# PUSH_DATA datagrams sent: 1 (233 bytes)
# PUSH_DATA acknowledged: 100.00%
### [DOWNSTREAM] ###
# PULL_DATA sent: 1 (100.00% acknowledged)
# PULL_RESP(onse) datagrams received: 0 (0 bytes)
# RF packets sent to concentrator: 0 (0 bytes)
# TX errors: 0
### [GPS] ###
# Invalid gps time reference (age: 1496844145 sec)
# Manual GPS coordinates: latitude 10.00000, longitude 20.00000, altitude -1 m
##### END #####
INFO: End of upstream thread

INFO: End of downstream thread for server  0.
INFO: concentrator stopped successfully
INFO: Exiting packet forwarder program
admin@ttn-gw05:/opt/lorix/clouds/ttn $

Great it works as expected, stopped the hand launched with CTRL-C and rebooted the gateway (service is auto starting)

admin@ttn-gw05:/opt/lorix/clouds/ttn $ sudo reboot ; logout

Ok, I now connected to my TTN console web site and clicked on Gateways

Then click on register new gateway, and here the trick, before doing anything, check the box

I'm using the legacy packet forwarder

then (and only after that) put the gateway ID (the one of the config file seen above) into field Gateway EUI.

Then continue filling form of gateway such like position, altitude brand name, ...

And once validated, console looks like that

And of course you can see traffic selecting your gateway and then Traffic tab.

Here we go, all is working