What’s the cheapest way I can have a test node?
I don’t know if it’s the cheapest. But they have great support. adafruit feather US frequency. I don’t know your area. Maybe you want 868MHz, instead of 900MHz.
Cheapest: Arduino Pro Mini + RFM95 - requires accurate soldering, good coding & setup skills, ability to read each line of the instructions.
Quickest: Adafruit Feather M0 with RFM95 - minor soldering, good coding & setup skills, ability to read each line of the instructions.
Least Hassle at reasonable price: Dragino LDS01 Door Sensor - complete solution, setup over a serial cable.
Most expensive: I do a fine line in Gucci Rhodium-plated devices with the Blinkenlights with a radioisotope thermoelectric generator so no need to change the batteries, comes in hand-stitched calf-leather pouch.
The first two you are using code to drive a radio chip. The first hasn’t got much memory so has limitations on how many sensors you can add. The second has bags of memory and is an officially supported platform for the code base used to run the radio & communicate with the LoRaWAN network. The fourth device is in direct competition with the marketing-driven manufacturers who manage to sell £10 worth of components for £200. Search on here to check if a device is more trouble than it’s worth or has multiple gotchas.
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With the requirements the move to TTN V3 brings to correctly implement MAC command parsing, such a low memory board isn’t advisable at all.
I use Dragino LDS01. They are rather cheap and easy to install.
Thanks for the info everyone. Looks like I will go for the door sensor. Is it easy to set up basic connect to my lora gateway?
imho it is very easy. Just remove the isolation from the battery and it will start joining. Additionally I would recommend RTFM.
I would get a Heltec CudeCell. They have done a good job making example code it’s got lithium and solar posibilities and it’s running the latest chipset and it’s utlra low power.
Nope, neither would I, but it fulfils the OP’s criteria, even if the criteria wasn’t ideal IMHO: Spend a few pennies more and get something that works now & in the future - like the Adafruit Feather
Found the quote:
“It’s unwise to pay too much, but it’s worse to pay too little. When
you pay too much, you lose a little money - that’s all. When you pay
too little, you sometimes lose everything, because the thing you
bought was incapable of doing the thing it was bought to do. The
common law of business balance prohibits paying a little and getting a
lot - it can’t be done. If you deal with the lowest bidder, it is well
to add something for the risk you run, and if you do that you will
have enough to pay for something better.”
John Ruskin
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Not sure it could be any simpler really!
I got a device that was supposed to be that easy too but after week(ends) of trying to get it to work I gave up, it needed to be configured via specially crafted (poorly documented) messages that I needed to send to it via lora. Never got it to work, it just kept on joining. What I took away from this experience was that if it doesn’t have a port on it to put your own software into it (or an example) then you might do yourself a disservice… unless you absolutly only ever want to see if a door is open. If that is the total sum of what you want from your lora network then for sure grab that. The Heltech CubeCell AB-01 dropped in price the past weeks now around €10. If you are just starting I would take the AB-02 under concideration for the intigrated oled display for a couple bucks more.
Different people, different skills and different requirements. If you simply need a node to fulfill a simple task and one is available that does so, no need to spend time learning to program it. (With the risk of not getting it right and getting frustrated about that)
Any LoRaWAN configuration message to the node can only be sent after it joined so sounds like you were having a chicken and egg problem.
I believe that is exactly what I said Jac. If the OP only ever wants to see if a door is open then of course, spend money on that. I speak of my personal experience. I find closed source “plug-n-pray” type things are more frustrating than open designs with a large user base and documentation.
De door sensor is about the same price as a Heltec, but the Heltech is much more useful and flexible. The example software for the Heltech and start-up guides are accurate and helpful to get started sucessfully. The OP wanted a node to generate data, but that probably isn’t the purpose of the endevour… just generating traffic for traffic’s sake.
That is you. Many people find Arduino mini+RFM95+LMIC (all open) incredible frustrating and hard to get working right.
The door sensor works within TTN specs out of the box. The Heltec stuff uses acknowledged uplinks exhausting the TTN downlink allowance in no time at all. Requests to fix the default setting seem not to be heard.
Their Arduino core is closed and can’t be used on other devices as it requires a magic license.
A better choice? Well in some cases it might be, everyone if free to decide for themselves.
In some cases it is, they’re called canary devices and are used to monitor the gateway and/or integrations. In those cases traffic is all you want.
In this case the OP was looking for a device to check the gateway is working so traffic is just what he is looking for.
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Yes just want something simple to check gateway is working. What sort of range should I be getting on stick 5db antenna outside?
It is nearly impossible to predict the range without knowing your environment. One thing I can say is, that an antenna outside on the roof gives you a larger coverage than an indoor antenna.
Have a look at TTNmapper, then you get an impression what coverage can be possible.
Would absolutely agree. Bugs in code you have access to get fixed, so once a project is mature, the remaining bugs are in the propriety parts you can’t fix.
I haven’t tried it, but my impression is that the Dragino door sensor isn’t really much different from their development kit, eg, you can make your own firmware for it using the development kit sources, only that is not officially supported.
The Heltech CubeCell AB-01 dropped in price the past weeks now around €10.
Indeed, and you can change the underlying LoRaWan stack. That said, Heltic is being silly with their $uper$ectret bootloader and apparently disabling the SWD pins by promptly putting them in some other mode. It would be nice not to have to use the hardware under the absurdities of Arduino. Nor is that doing them any good as it’s quite easy to dump the information they’re trying to “protect” from Arduino code.
Jac, I’ve odrdered this Heltec ones cause I thought it was open and compatible.
From your comment I am thinking i was wrong in recomending them or even buying it myself. These incorrect settings you reffer to… can they be fixed or have I just tossed money down the drain?
Ever heard of “the guy with the Swiss accent” Andreas Spiess? His review of this board didn’t mention anthing about needing a special license to use them or incorrect default settings.
I though they would compatible with the arduino IDE and without any code on them.
oh and… what are SWD pins?
The hardware you ordered is Arduino IDE compatible and can be programmed without having to worry about the SWD pins with a serial connection. The hardware should be programmed with the magic license required for Arduino usage if it is genuine Heltec hardware. (They want to protect their investment and I think they are going about it the wrong way but being Chinese they probably know what lengths copy cats go to to sell comparable hardware cheaper)
The wrong settings referred to are easily fixed when creating your own LoRaWAN program. Just make sure to select unconfirmed messages in the settings before compiling.
Our issue with the hardware is that it is presented as being open but to to able to use it you rely on a binary blob for Arduino compatibility and the development environment available for it defaults to the wrong settings.
A deal breaker? Not necessarily as long as you are aware of these limitations and take into account it is not as open and transparent as the advertising suggests.
SWD pins are used for low level programming and debugging when no bootloader is available,