Trento LoRa experiment

The Trento LoRa experiment is a sensing network deployed in Trento. It measures temperature in various points in Trento and is based on a LoRa network. It uses a Raspberry PI for the Gateway and an Arduino for the sensor board. The Arduino board is measuring the ambient temperature and broadcasting the readings through the LoRa network. The Raspberry gets the readings and decode them using a small Node-RED dataflow program. The Node-RED program then uploads the results on the RaptorBox Cloud instance through its API.

Hardware

Gateway:

• 1 Raspberry 2
• 1 Rasberry shield
• 1 LoRa module
• 1 flash card
• 1 box

Sensor board:

• 1 Arduino
• 1 sensor shield
• 1 extension shield
• 1 LoRa module
• 1 temperature sensor
• 1 box

Software installation

Gateway

The gateway flash drive should be flashed with the "ThingBox" image. Download it at this link. Unzip it. Flash the downloaded image (.img) with unetbootin.

You are now ready to boot your gateway! Plug the Gateway in CN network with cable. To find out its IP, issue:

nmap -sP 192.168.8.0/24

Repeat with and without the cable plugged. The difference should show you its IP. SSH inside the raspberry (password: raspberry):

ssh [email protected]

Once inside the raspberry, install the LoRa library using this method.

wget http://www.cooking-hacks.com/media/cooking/images/documentation/raspberry_arduino_shield/raspberrypi2.zip && unzip raspberrypi2.zip && cd cooking/arduPi && chmod +x install_arduPi && ./install_arduPi && rm install_arduPi && cd ../..
wget http://www.cooking-hacks.com/media/cooking/images/documentation/tutorial_SX1272/arduPi-api_LoRa_v1_4.zip && unzip -u arduPi-api_LoRa_v1_4.zip && cd cooking/examples/LoRa && chmod +x cook.sh && cd ../../..  

Istall additional softwares:

sudo apt-get autossh
sudo apt-get install sysv-rc-conf -y

Sensor node

Install Arduino GUI on your PC from here. Run Arduino GUI. Import the LoRa library into Arduino GUI:

wget http://www.cooking-hacks.com/media/cooking/images/documentation/tutorial_SX1272/SX1272_library_arduino_v1.4.zip
unzip SX1272_library_arduino_v1.4.zip

Click on Sketch/Include Library/import .ZIP library and select the file arduinoLoRa_v1_4.zip. Do the same with the file arduino-api_v1_4.zip.

Copy the code from this file. Add additional libraries: DHT, Barometer

Select the correct port in the menu "Tools" and open the Serial Monitor. Upload the code. You should see the messages with the measurements being send in the serial monitor.

Running

Start the receiver program from the LoRa examples:

ssh [email protected]
cd cooking/examples/LoRa

create the file measures.txt

./cook.sh LoRa_gateway_RX.cpp
./LoRa_gateway_RX.cpp_exe

You should see the messages being received. Now open your browser using the given IP:

http://192.168.8.71/

This should display the Node-RED interface. Click on Menu/Import/Clipboard and paste the network from this file. Start the network using the button "Activate". If the sensor board is running, you should see the network blinking. The data is uploaded on the RaptorBox website.

Configuration

In order to restart LoRa when the gateway in rebooted, the sender program need to be started at boot-up:

in /etc/init.d folder copy this [file] (./gateway/ssh-LoRa-autoreboot-config/lora)

Then launch in a terminal

$ sysv-rc-conf

and select for lora service rcx.d with x 2,3,4,5

Now you can reboot the gtateway and the LoRa sender will start automatically.

Testing

Once the gateway and sensor node running, the data should be uploaded to Raptor. You can monitor the data uploaded in Raptorbox with the commands:

$ sudo apt-get install jq
$ echo "curl -XGET -k  https://api.raptorbox.eu/6da85a54-c7ca-49e4-a309-964549b67476/streams/environmentaldata -H\"Authorization: Bearer d28bcf86fa9623f8bf67257c432866469d8044f7\"" >> getRaptor
$ sudo chmod a+x getRaptor
$ watch -n 1 "./getRaptor | jq '.data | .[length -1]'"

Deployment

• Raffaele's home
• Fabio's home
• Corentin's home
• Andrea's home
• Abdur's home
• CNET offices (already there for meeting rooms)

Gateway access

In order to access the gateways from CN when they will be installed at home in local networks, it is necessary to install a reverse ssh tunnel.

In /etc/systemd/system folder copy this [file] (./gateway/ssh-LoRa-autoreboot-config/autossh.service)

Then launch in a terminal:

$ systemctl daemon-reload

$ systemctl start autossh.service

$ systemctl status autossh.service (In order to check if the autossh service is running correctly)

$ systemctl enable autossh.service (Enable autossh.service to be started on bootup)

You can now reboot the gateway. This will create a reverse tunnel from the raspberry to the server at 217.77.95.65 (in this case a SIRIS VM). Then from the SIRIS VM it is possible to ssh to the raspberry:

ssh -p 22222 root@localhost

The tunnel port (22221,2,3,4) need to be different for each gateway.