LoPy Nano-Gateway

[Roberto]

Hello @Feiko,
This is an answer to your post here New release New firmware release 1.2.2.b1:
I'm answering in the blog since this will allow us to keep a more organised discussion

Regarding your problem with the NanoGateway code, here are a few remarks from your post:

1. In your code you are sending a message and changing the ID every time you do it, the original code had this Device ID as an ID of the device not as a message Id witch is the way you are using it here. It was meant as a way of identifying 2 or mode LoPys connected to the same gateway. I actually tested this same code with 10 devices some days after the original post.

2. Even with 1 in mind you are just giving the device time.time() + 20 (that is 20ms) to
   a. Pack the message
   b. Send the message using LoRa
   c. 2nd LoPy receive the message using LoRa
   d. Message unpack and processing
   e. Sending ACK over LoRa

   The problem with this approach is that in LoRa packages (specially several byte long ones) can take hundreds of milliseconds to transmit.
   Since you are checking almost immediately after you send the message and in a while loop with no delays you get that no ACK received output.
   My recommendation would be to
   a. Extend the amount of time you are going to way for a message (this might change depending on your application). Lets say 20 seconds for testing
   b. make the while(waiting_ack and timeout > time.time()) delay at least 100 ms before checking for messages again

3. Regarding the Ack with wrong device_id: 1 message. A little more of the same as point 2. To illustrate here is a little time span of your problem
   a. Message ID 1 is created and send
   b. Node waits 20 ms for ack
   c. Message arrives at gateway in ms: 25
   d. Node already ditched the package as non responding and sends Message ID: 2
   e. Node wauts 20 ms for ack on pkg 2
   f. Gateway responds to ack pkg 1 in ms 26
   g. Node gets to ms 40 and trashes the pack 2 as non responding to ack and sends message ID: 3
   g. Message with ack of message 1 arrives at node in ms 48.
   h. At this point if (device_id == DEVICE_ID) will check if the ack that jsut arrived (1) matches the current pkg (3). NO. node prints to screen
   Ack with wrong device_id

   Adding extra time (like in point 2) would fix this issue but it will give you a temporal solution only, since the error will present itself if the message takes more than 20 secs (unprovable). The full solution would require an implementation of a retry message sending process with a message queue of messages that where sent and are waiting for an ACK.
   There is a lot of documentation regarding this kind of algorithms out there and it was not implemented in the original NanoGateway post since it escapes the scope of the demonstration code.

4. Regarding the OSError: [Errno 11] EAGAIN i'll check into this but i tried the original code posted in the blog with the new firmware and was not able to reproduce it.

[Feiko]

@Roberto Thanks for your reply.

I've tried to give the program enough time to receive. According to documentation time.time() should be in seconds not milliseconds. However

import time
from machine import Timer

chrono = Timer.Chrono()

chrono.start()
timeout = time.time() + 20
while time.time() < timeout:
    pass
chrono.stop()
print(chrono.read())

This outputs 3.062622 so 3 seconds.
I've even tried increasing this to 10 seconds, no luck.

I used the deviceId as a package identifier. Bad practice, but it made for an easy test scenario in which I could identify the package beinig acknoledged.

using time.sleep(0.2) before sending the ACK package fixed the nanogateway crash. However the client still receives the wrong response message (DEVICE_ID -1).

You used the new firmware is this 1.2.2.b1 or the upcoming release?

Could you look into reproducing the problem?

[borjam]

@Feiko Are both devices close? Try lowering the transmission power to the minimum (2 dBm) and move them several meters apart (or use an attenuator).

I have been doing tests between a LoPy and a Raspberry with a Dragino Lora/GPS hat (SX1276 based) and with just 2 dBm I can receive packets reliably with the RPi and the LoPy in different flats and at the opposite sides of the building. Depending on the antenna positioning I even registered an average SNR of -8 dB, which is amazing.

[Feiko]

The distance and the power do not seem to be the problem. I tried running the test over 100 meters. If I put a time.sleep(0.2) after lora_sock.recv(512) and lora_sock.send(pkg) on both server side and client side, the code runs. In previous firmware the code run straight out of the box. I think the OSError:[Enro 11] is caused by a cue in the send buffer. Sometimes there are still receive messages left in the buffer, even after a soft reset. I use the code

recv_dumpbuffer = lora_sock.recv(512)
time.sleep(0.2)

to make sure the receivebuffer is empty.
the 200ms waits in between Lora commands are hardly ideal. On previous firmware versions the code run straight out of the box.

[Feiko]

Just run the Nano-Gateway with the latest firmware 1.3.0.b1. All problems are resolved :D. Thanks Pycom team.

[gouao]

This post is deleted!

[microman7k]

Hi,

On "Nano-Gateway" with the latest firmware 1.3.0.b1 i'm still getting "ValueError: buffer too small" after hour of two running posted sample code. Is this problem with the sample code or is it firmware problem?

[gouao]

This post is deleted!

[FelixDonkers]

@gertjanvanhethof I'm also interrested to use LoPy as a LoRaWan gateway. Looking forward to a solution.

[Colateral]

@Roberto We setup a test bench with 3 LoPy following the idea of your code. We did the test with blocking socket and thread and non blocking sockets. The result is the same.

2 are the nodes configured as tx_iq and and one is the Gw (rx_iq).

The script is simple: each device (node and GW) is sending 29 bytes message size (_MSG_FORMAT = "!HHLBB%ds") each 2 seconds. In the msg data we are printing a counter (that varies from device). That counter is also in the header (see above)

We noticed that sometimes if you start the gw after the nodes... randomly some of the nodes are not receiving the data, despite the fact the GW is receiving the data from the nodes. And we observed also that sometimes when we start the node after the GW, the GW is not receiving the data from the nodes.

You need to reset the node or GW in order to get the broadcasted data from to the others... and this hazardous and not at all good in real deployment.

BUT THE MOST PROBLEMATIC is the fact that the 29bytes are partially received, sometimes you are getting 15bytes or whatever number less than 29bytes.

Have you experience this connection issue related with nodes/gw starting order?
Does LoPy stack is guarantee the receiving of msg in one chunk? ( if you send 29bytes you got 29bytes)

Here are some samples:
good msg receive

from: 800
to: 0
Id: 3058
Flags: 0
PayloadSize: 18
Payload: b'3058- 1234567890 '
<<< beat msgId 3066
bufferSize 29
pkgSize 28
data_size 18
remaining buffer 0

bad msg receive

from: 800
to: 0
Id: 3059
Flags: 0
PayloadSize: 18
Payload: b'3059- 1234567890 '
bufferSize 15
buffer too small <<< ustruct exception

[Roberto]

Hi @Colateral,

Yes, i have noticed that sometimes some messages arrive malformed or with bytes missing. This could be due to LoRa message collision between devices. If two devices send at the same time in the same band this can happen.

There is a new blog here in the forum with a new code suggestion that includes.

1. Message length check on the nano-gateway
2. Message retry on the nodes
3. Max timeout in the nodes

Number 3 will help with the fact that you have to have the nano-gateway on before you start the nodes. In this code, after sending a message the node waits in an infinite loop for the ack. The problem with this approach is that if no ack is received (the nano-gateway was not connected yet) the node will stay in that loop until reseted.

Keep in ming that both this and the new code are just examples for specific usages and they require adaptation depending on your needs.
The link for the new post is LoPy Nano-Gateway Extended (Timeout and Retry)

Best,
Roberto

[feabhas]

@Roberto I have successfully got a 2 node and 1 gateway setup working based on your code, thanks very much. One minor query, In the gateway you use

_LORA_PKG_FORMAT = "!BB%ds"

but in the node_1.py you miss off the !, e.g.

_LORA_PKG_FORMAT = "BB%ds"

Shouldn't they be consistent?

[Roberto]

Hi @feabhas
yeah, that sounds about right. Change that please. Ill edit the post accordingly Thanks

[Colateral]

@Roberto Your example it is a good start but looping and blocking might not be a good approach.

We built another script that is using threads with blocking socket ... and run the script on a minimal Lora "star" network: one GW and 2 NODES. For each device you have to configure tx,rx and device id in cfg file . and upload the script and cfg file on it and run the script in Putty (not Pymakr). We didn't faced with this script clashing issues.. but we faced other issues.

You will see that after awhile on GW, the script is ending with a memory leak... but this is never happening on the nodes.
If you run the script from 3 Pymakr instances ... sometimes is working for hours and after that the GW is stop sending.

We conclude that is something wrong on the stack.

The issue might be related only to rx_iq configuration.
https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0BzRE8IpnMMnLNHBseDJWblN4VGM?usp=sharing

[Roberto]

Hi @Colateral
As i wrote in my last message, there is a new example of the nano-gateway with a non-blocking loop approach.
Regarding the memory issues we will look into this. I left the code on the other post running for 3 hours without any problems. I will leave it running today on a test bench for 24+ h to see if there are any problems and monitor the memory while it transmits. Will let you know the results.

The link to the new code is
https://forum.pycom.io/post/3242

[Colateral]

@Roberto HI Roberto. Thanks. I ran the last script and is running fine. Regarding the memory leak, I believe is related with socket blocking approach. If we change the script and move to non blocking (as your script does) everything works fine.

[Roberto]

@Colateral
Thanks for the quick response, i'll try a blocking approach to see if i can reproduce the error and check whats the root of it.

[assia]

@Colateral said in LoPy Nano-Gateway:
Hi @Roberto i am bbegginer in LoRa and i don't understand the use of rx_iq and tx_iq.!
thanks

[borjam]

@assia said in LoPy Nano-Gateway:

@Colateral said in LoPy Nano-Gateway:
Hi @Roberto i am bbegginer in LoRa and i don't understand the use of rx_iq and tx_iq.!

It's easy. A LoRaWAN network is not a peer to peer network. There is a master (the gateway) that communicates with the nodes, but there is no node to node communication.

Imagine that one of your nodes has the receiver active and another one transmits. The transmission is intended to be received by the gateway, of course (we said that there is no node-to-node communication) but the receiving node will get the packet anyway, if only to discard it.

That reception and discarding has an energy cost. How do you avoid it? By having the nodes transmit in a mode that a node can't understand, only the gateway.

Now, imagine this scenario: you make the nodes use tx_iq inversion (which is a sort of signal inversion) and the gateway use rx_iq inversion.

In this case, a signal transmitted by a node will be inverted, and the gateway will successfully decode it. But other nodes, expecting a non inverted signal, won't detect the inverted signal. So you have just avoided the unintended packet reception problem.

[assia]

@borjam
Thanks for the quick response, It's much clearer now.