@creatinghere, @johan might be able to clarify but my understanding from MT is that Open LoRa packet forwarder was for mLinux. It’s part of set builds for LoRaWAN network providers such as Actility, IBM LPRS, Obwise etc.
The only work MT are doing is on integrating multiple AEP to form a wide area private network, and that’s probably going to be MQTT based.
Hi @johan — we’ll be setting up our conduit this weekend. Looking forward to at least seeing where our “edge” is in relation to TTNs. Love to know how your Multitech call went, when you get a chance. —P
I am able - skypename: artsandideas – but mine in the AEP NodeRED issue. Different endpoint/protocol.
I would very much like to know specifics for my platform of choice. BTW, in a firm believer in the nodeRED. It provides easy and rapid development.
Personal note: One key “capacitor” and real social value-maker of TTN should, in my opinion, be to foster an “everyone as engineer”, diverse, low barrier to entry philosophy.
Low cost, wide access, diversity and simple “hacking” is crucial… That is why we purchased NodeRED.
I have been playing with the MT stuff for a while in the TTN dungeon at RockStart and here are my findings:
Next to the micro USB cable you will need either a PC equiped with an old school serial port or a USB to Serial RS-232 with DB9 male to be able to run the AT commands to the mDot development board.
For the connection to the MT Conduit a simple ethernet cable is fine.
I had a good call with Multitech about integrating their Conduit with The Things Network. So there are a couple of versions, two of them are interesting for us: the mLinux and the Node RED one.
The mLinux will run a packet forwarder. They are currently working on that and I expect results this week. Instructions will follow once they have that working.
The Node RED version is intended for private networks and does all the decryption on the gateway. That’s fine but doesn’t really align with the default set up of The Things Network. It will be supported though; the gateway can send decrypted data directly to the application handler using a custom The Things Network node that will be available on the Node RED gateway. People that want to use the Node RED gateway as a “normal” gateway: they can flash it to a mLinux version and run the packet forwarder.
BTW @creatinghere we will support Node RED on the application handler too. I don’t think there’s much use for it in wide area networks on the gateways.
Hi @flavio@creatinghere@KarlNL@Ropu@johan ! Let me share with you my first impressions about tradeoff between mLinux and Node RED technical approaches. Node RED puts abstraction layer to obtain results supposedly faster (service-oriented) and mLinux seems to me a bottom up approach. For those who have knowledge in Linux, mLinux sounds good, mainly because it gives a better control of development process. Please, let me know what you think about it.
True, but I think it’s primarily intended for another architecture. For the nodes to actually do things with data, you need to decrypt the data on the gateway. In wide area networks, you don’t know the application keys at the gateway level.
@johan, For us, a broad, community-driven project (5 towns on an island) ease of development is vital for widespread adoption/use and diverse applications. NodeRed on the conduit makes that possible.
Can we use MQTT as our pub/sub protocol with TTN?
Andrew @thinginnovations wondered:
“Could there be an option to dump the packets to the local mqtt broker as it does already and forward them on also?”
Or, 2) are you thinking of another way for NodeRed conduits to exchange authenticated packets with TTN?
@eduardo the as @johan has said the Node-RED version is designed for private networks and not for public TTN. What it does allow is do processing closer to the edge which does seem to appeal to some of the TTN community. Also node-red version gives you for free DeviceHQ which allows remote re-boot, firmware and node-red updates from the cloud. You don’t get device HQ with mLinux.
BTW we use Conduit AEP (Node-RED) to cover a single site and to integrate to onsite and cloud servers via mqtt/web services. Also Conduit has other mCards for WIFI/BLE/Thread so makes great integration tool.
