GPS tracking with LoRa

Anyone did GPS tracking app (android mainly) with LoRa?

Can you provide some more details ?

Are you maybe trying to forward location data from a TTN GPS enabled node to an Android app ?

I’m just curious if anyone did some similar projects. What kind of database you use (firestore?)… Is there any simple android source that can display in realtime given coordinates and such

Similar to what projects ?

Can you explain what it is you are actually trying to do ?

For example track public transport and display it publicly on display

There is one example here;

https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/story/lorawan-gsp-tracker

What database Cayenne uses I am not sure.

ehm… tracking assets is one of the applications for LoRaWAN, provided you do not need too fine granularity. Any database could be used, nothing special about them.
Displaying data is not LoRaWAN specific and is one of the applications of a lot of 3rd party services and libraries (like Cayenne, but you can also simply develop it using Google Maps or Leaflet.js for a truly free solution).

Thanks all., I wanted to hear experiences… what would be simple and best before I start numerous project that will eventually be fail or difficult … I did lot of googling and didn’t find this Leaflet for example (tnx).

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A lot of ready integrations here: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/marketplace/products/integrations

I have done this with influxDB as the database. I also ran same data through firebase for real-time display (output can be viewed here), for a short while before using the worldmap plugin on node-red currently. A view of the live output from the node-red plugin is available here.

Same data is saved to influxDB for historical analysis.

You can easily integrate to an android app using a suitable product from HERE.COM.

Whats your proposed solution like?

I was thinking like sending location every 30 second for public transport and display it on LCD or similar on bus station. Similar for local islands boats… for community, not commercial.

That may be possible depending on the amount of data you want to send with each transmission and the data rate. 30sec is be possible below SF10. Above that spreading factor the interval will definitely be greater than 30secs.
I would assume the data you want to send will include at least Lon, Lat, Speed, Heading. In our application, for just those four and battery level, we find that SF9 can send at about 22seconds intervals minimum but above that spreading factor timing increases. With SF12 the minimum posible was 3mins intervals.

yup… nothing air consuming much and it’s small city… about 2km wide and long not more. and I’ve placed four outdoor gateways which cover entire town. now I’m ready to use it. I’d send just long and lat… in some cases maybe battery level.

Cool. I would like to know how data reception from moving vehicles turns out. Please share your experience when you implement. Good luck!

well I did some TTNmapper thing and it was a big supprise… not one lost packet in entire town, with device stuck in my motorcycle case behind.
for example… just one device did this
https://ttnmapper.org/special.php?node=ttgo_tbeam_new_zalemljen_direktno&date=2019-05-03&alldates=on&gateways=on

Wow, 14Km on SF7? What are the specs of the antennas at both the node and gateways?

Shengda SDBF1.4 on gateways … and that small 3-4cm black on ttgo t-beam.

Do you keep the TTN fair access policy in mind? Average airtime maximal 30 seconds a day. So for 30 second updates your transmission should be 30 / (24 * 60 * 2) = 30 / 2880 = 0.0104166 seconds max.

I’ll get that into consideration also. For now … it’s city wide network with only my 1 node that does power relay… … as time goes by and traffic increases I’ll surely add more fair time.

It would be better to design now with the limitations in mind. That way you do not run into nasty surprises later on. (Get a LoRa airtime calculator to see how much data you can transmit in 0.0104 seconds to see what I mean. Don’t forget LoRaWAN uses 13 bytes ‘overhead’)

The TTN fair access policy applies to every node, no matter how many nodes there might be in a certain area. (Why do I keep reading variations on ‘I am the only user so I don’t bother others and as such the rules do not apply to me’? When using TTN you should play by its rules.)

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