Heltec CubeCell - part 1

hunter8801 · November 6, 2019, 3:25am

Arduino-lowpower library will not work with CubeCell series, because different MCU core has a different low power mechanism.

You can try our example:

Sleep 5000ms, wake up via GPIO:

github.com

HelTecAutomation/ASR650x-Arduino/blob/master/libraries/Basics/examples/LowPower_WakeUpByGPIO/LowPower_WakeUpByGPIO.ino

#include "Arduino.h"


#define timetosleep 5000
static TimerEvent_t sleep;
uint8_t lowpower=1;

void OnSleep()
{
  Serial.println("into lowpower mode. press user key to wake up");
  lowpower=1;
}
void wakeup()
{
  delay(10);
  if(digitalRead(GPIO7)==0)
  {
    Serial.printf("wake up, %d ms later into lowpower mode.\r\n",timetosleep);
    lowpower=0;
    //timetosleep ms later into lowpower mode;

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Sleep 5000ms, wake up via RTC timer:

github.com

HelTecAutomation/ASR650x-Arduino/blob/master/libraries/Basics/examples/LowPower_WakeUpByTimer/LowPower_WakeUpByTimer.ino

#include "Arduino.h"


#define timetosleep 5000
#define timetowake 5000
static TimerEvent_t sleep;
static TimerEvent_t wakeup;
uint8_t lowpower=1;

void OnSleep()
{
  Serial.printf("into lowpower mode, %d ms later wake up.\r\n",timetowake);
  lowpower=1;
  //timetosleep ms later wake up;
  TimerSetValue( &wakeup, timetowake );
  TimerStart( &wakeup );
}
void OnWakeup()
{
  Serial.printf("wake up, %d ms later into lowpower mode.\r\n",timetosleep);

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E_T · November 6, 2019, 9:28am

Thank you!

Paul_Stewart · November 10, 2019, 1:29am

Hi All,

just got my hands on one of these.

I use AU915 and in libraries like LMIC I have always been able to set the sub band (i.e. channels 8-15) that TTN uses.

Anybody know how to do this on the Cube Cell

cheers
Paul

hunter8801 · November 14, 2019, 3:32am

Look into the code,and set the channel mask. In LoRaWan_APP.cpp file:

Paul_Stewart · November 14, 2019, 4:05am

thanks @hunter8801 for the response, trouble is I am not at all a programmer or even half decent at coding.

What would I need to change here to achieve this frequency plan?

hunter8801 · November 14, 2019, 4:13am

I am often asked questions about the Capsule sensor’s screw nut… Hope this picture can make a direct sense to you.

When we design the capsule sensor, we hope users can do some basic test immediately, users can insert various sensors with a basic shell.

So, we don’t think there is anything easier than finding a cola bottle all over the world.

.stl file for 3D print (Thanks to Raystream for sharing): https://github.com/HelTecAutomation/ASR650x-Arduino/tree/master/3D_Print/HTCC-AC01

hunter8801 · November 14, 2019, 4:23am

Choose AU_915 in Arduino menu firstly, and then change the channelsMaskTemp[0] like this:
channelsMaskTemp[0] = 0xFF00

jody-crow · November 22, 2019, 7:41am

@hunter8801 How does one program the “CubeCell – Module” without the board? Is it just a case of connecting a USB to serial to the TX and RX pins? Does it need to be in a special bootloader mode?

Thank you, great product.

Paul_Stewart · November 22, 2019, 8:12am

Hi @hunter8801,

That doesn’t seem to change the behaviour at all

Cheers
Paul .

hunter8801 · November 24, 2019, 9:36am

No, that should work, let’s have a look the LoRaWAN protocol document:

Refer to my picture, the LoRaWAN protocol set the AU915 upstream channel frequency:
Total 64 channels, 915.2MHz begin, incrementing linearly by 200KHz, and 927.8MHz end.

Then look back to our code:
in the channelsMaskTemp[0], 0x00FF means use the first 0~7 channels, they are 915.2MHz, 915.4MHz, 915.6MHz … 916.6MHz. When you set the value to 0xFF00, it means the upload channels changed to 8~15, they are 916.8MHz, 917.0MHz … 918.2MHz.

Now, I think you need to confirm your gateway’s listening channels and listening frequency. Make sure they match the 8~15 channels.

hunter8801 · November 24, 2019, 10:19am

We will update such a document within two days.

jody-crow · November 24, 2019, 1:13pm

Thank you, that would be great.

MOS-FET · November 24, 2019, 8:06pm

What a great product I’ve been wanting for this. Can I use also ABP access to TTN?

hunter8801 · November 25, 2019, 7:59am

@MOS-FET Yes, of course.

bertrik · December 4, 2019, 11:49pm

I just received this board, looks very promising, but I have a few doubts:

How mature is the LoRaWAN stack?
Can I run the mcci-catena arduino-lmic stack on it? I doubt it can because that seems to be written (at the moment) for sx1272. Also this board seems to have rather limited RAM (only 16 kB).
Can I build it with platformio instead of Arduino IDE? I think the Arduino IDE is awful, you need to select a lot of options manually in the menu, there is an endless list of devices that you need to scroll through. And if you switch to another Arduino project, you have to re-select all of the settings. With platformio, this is all much easier, you can specify the libraries tool chain in a text file and easily switch between targets. It is even possible to build the Arduino software on the command line, automatically upon git push on a service like travis-ci.

cslorabox · December 5, 2019, 12:11am

Why would you post such a question here after you asked the very same thing on the issues page of that repo yesterday and got a negative answer from the maintainer?

Please don’t duplicate issues all over the web, especially with no acknowledgement that they’ve been asked by you before - and already answered.

github.com/mcci-catena/arduino-lmic

Heltec CubeCell support

opened 11:12PM - 03 Dec 19 UTC

bertrik

Would it be possible to support this particular board with the mcci arduino-lmic… stack? https://heltec.org/project/htcc-ab01/ It consist of a ARM Cortex M0+ microcontroller plus a Semtech SX LoRa radio chip, combined with low-power circuitry to allow battery charging from a solar cell. https://github.com/HelTecAutomation/ASR650x-Arduino The Arduino code comes with a LoRa example, but I am much more confident in the mcci-catena arduino-lmic stack. The lower layer of the heltec board appears to be a SPI+GPIO based interface. https://github.com/HelTecAutomation/ASR650x-Arduino/blob/master/cores/asr650x/board/src/asr_board.c As far as I can tell it looks possible, I might try to hack up some code this weekend, simply starting with reading an ID register, perhaps get a good idea of the pin connections, etc.

Also this board seems to have rather limited RAM (only 16 kB).

That is hardly an issue. It is, for example 8 times the memory present on an Arduino Uno. The 2K on an Uno is marginal. But most of the chips people are using are in the 10-20K range, those 16K are plenty.

As explained on github, the issue is the need to adapt to the different LoRa chip having (all though not mentioned there) actually a rather different interface to software.

bertrik · December 5, 2019, 8:14am

Oops, seems I hit a nerve there, sorry, just expressing some doubts after just having received this board and investigating its possibilities.

Good to realise that 16 kB isn’t that small compared to other targets.
Arduino-lmic stack support isn’t a question with closure or a fixed answer yet, that I should shut up about (IMO). At least for me it’s clear that it currently does not work, but it might work in the future with some help.

LoRaTracker · December 5, 2019, 9:03am

Not so much some help, the LMIC code would need an extensive re-write, the SX127x and SX126x devices are very different software wise.

Maybe you would care to volunteer ?

hunter8801 · December 5, 2019, 11:19am

Hi @jody-crow

Hope those two documents can help you:

https://docs.heltec.cn/#/en/faq/cubecell_series_common_problem_summary?id=how-to-access-bootloader-mode

hunter8801 · December 5, 2019, 11:23am

We had fully migration the LoRaWAN 1.0.2 protocol into the source code, I think the LoRaWAN protocol is much smarter than LMIC library.