Category Archives: IoT

all about Internet of things

First step in LoRa land – microchip RN2483 test

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Microchip RN2483 Lora

Microchip RN2483 Lora

After spending some time reading and writing about LoRa it was a good time to make some real test of this technology.

As actually there is no network for LoRa, as much as I know, in my town, I expected to start a simple LoRa test (point to point and not as part of a WAN). I just bought some RN2483 LoRa module from Microchip online and also get some from Avnet (thank you Guillaume)

 

The module is easy to solder on a prototype board and get its command over a serial port. I choose to make two modules :

  • The first one is connected to a FTDI cable and will stay at home as a basestation
  • The second one is connected to an Arduino and will be a mobile device for my test

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What is LoRa ?

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Lora-300x171LoRa is a dedicated network for Internet Of Things and Machine2Machine communications. It is actually the main competitor against SigFox.

As LoRa is actually rising in France with different announce from 2 of the main cellular operators deploying the network, it is a good time to have a post on what it is, how it works and what differs compared with SigFox.

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Some GNSS / GPS stuff that are good to know for IoT

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gpsWhen you start developing a GPS solution, you have to deal with energy and for this you have to create a strategy based on what you expect and the size of your battery.

Basically, a GPS is consuming about 25mA when running. An active antenna will consume about 10mA more. The first time you start it, it have to sync with the satellites, get the ephemeris then you can position in 2D then in 3D.

Read more for more information

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Hack the SigFox KeyApp demonstrator / tool

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Sigfox keyapp

Sigfox keyapp

The Sigfox keyapp is a useful tool you can buy or you can get when reaching the Sigfox kick-start session. Basically, this tool send a message each time you click on the button. This allow to check the network availability where you want just clicking on the button. Easy, useful !

The KeyApp have an internal battery, one led, one button. It is refill with the usb connector and it is based on TD1208. The internal firmware is a partial modem ; it can be used as a modem on serial port from a PC but not all the AT command are implemented on it.

My purpose was to modify this tool to send automatically message every 12 minutes. The firmware can be modified and upload on the standard way (take a look to my other posts). For sure by doing a such thing you take the risk of loosing warranty and you do it at your own risk.

To make it works you just have to know some of the cabling.

  • The Led is active HIGH and located on USR4 signal.
  • To enable the battery power, you must activate USR1 LOW
  • To read the button you must take a look on USR0

The battery is by default not powering the system until you switch USR1 to LOW. If you do not do this, the system will only work on the usb power. It means you can switch off the system simply by switching USR1 to high.

Will come soon a basic sample code.

 

Telecom Device TD1205 – Sigfox – Test

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TD1205 - sigfox

TD1205 – sigfox

The TD1205 device is more than the usual Telecom Design Sigfox embedded circuit as TD1204 and TD1208, they are a all in one chip providing GPS antenna and RF antenna. Ready to use, to be clear you just need to plug a battery to use it.

In my point of view, for many applications not requiring more than 2 GPIOs, this product is really easy and chip way to design a SigFox product. As it costs around 55$ and you just have to add box & battery id sounds like the most affordable for small quantities. But …

This post is detailing what is specific to this chip ; read more following the link

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SigFox arduino Raspberry PI hacking board

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sigfox hack board

sigfox hack board

I assume you know a little bit who I am and what I’m doing, I’m not the one to by > 100€ to buy a one shot development board kit to test & hack a device like the Telecom Design chip. So basically I built my own with the objective to work with multiple configuration.

My “cahier des charges” was to make a board able to be installed as a dauther board on a raspberry PI,  able to support an arduino, able to run autonomously and being able to own a TD1204 as a TD1208.

It was a huge work to route it and I must recognize that it do not have all the GPIO connected as I expected but it exists, it works and it help me to build my first SigFox prototypes with success.

So, now, I propose to distribute this board to those of you looking for a such swiss knife.

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TD1204 – How to use GPS device for geolocalization with Sigfox

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The TD1204 is the GPS & Accelerometer version of the sigfox Telecom Design chip. After a previous post about the use of the accelerometers (here) I’m describing how to use the GPS module.

The embedded GPS is based on a UBX G7020 chip. This chip will give you the date, time, longitude, latitude, altitude, speed and direction of the device when activated.

Read more for programming details

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