Is it possible to use single lopy as a gateway and device ?

[Harish kumar]

Hello everyone,
I am using Lopy as a bridge in between my device and a gateway( so now it is going to act as a gateway first when it fetch data from device,then it will act as a device when it sends the data to my gateway). So once you it get data from device it stores and sends data to the gateway by usiing Lora.
Hope you understand now clearly. I just need to know whether I can do or not ? Thank you in Advance.

[robert-hh]

@harish-kumar No, you cannot. The LoRa modem can either send or receive.
But why do you want to do that. The gateway received data from nodes and forwards them to a network server. If the data is borne at the gateway device, it may be sent directly to the network server, as long as the data format matches. For TTN, that could be tricky because the server expects a certain packet format including encryption of the payload.

[Harish kumar]

@robert-hh Thank you for your reply. It's because I don't have enough signal to transfer directly. So I am trying to use it as a repeater. If this is not possible, I will search for someother way.

[robert-hh]

@harish-kumar As long as you want to use a lopy as repeater, you should be able to set that up. You just cannot receive & send at the same time, but you should be able to switch between modes. But using better antennas at the gateway & the mote may do the trick too.

[bmarkus]

@robert-hh said in Is it possible to use single lopy as a gateway and device ?:

@harish-kumar As long as you want to use a lopy as repeater, you should be able to set that up. You just cannot receive & send at the same time, but you should be able to switch between modes. But using better antennas at the gateway & the mote may do the trick too.

Such LoRaWAN repeater may work for uplink, but what is about downlink timing in 'Class-A', how it is handled when device can receive both gateway and repeater, etc? I don't think that you can use a repeater in a LoRaWAN network.

[catalin]

hi @Harish-kumar,
We have in development a solution for your problem. Maybe in 1-2 weeks we can release a development build.
So, you have 3 devices A(with sensor) <-> B(repeater)<->C(gateway) (A can't communicate with C). What distance is between them?
Or did you tested what LoRa parameters you need for a good communication between pairs (A to/from B and B to/from C)> bandwidth/spread-factor? Or data-rate for LoRaWAN?
Do you have a power budget for node B(repeater), is it battery powered?
How ofter are you sending data?

[Harish kumar]

@catalin Sorry for my very late response ! Somehow I missed these comments.
1.The distance between A(sensor) and B(repeater) will be very near around 70-80 metres, but in between there will be many walls. So I plan to use Lopy4 as a repeater. Yeah now Device A is communicating with Gateway, but in safer side I am going to use Lopy4(repeater).
2.No I have not tested with Lora Parameters.
3.Yeah mostly I will have some power backup.
4.Very often I send data.Average time (5-10)mins.
Thank you in Advance.

[Harish kumar]

@bmarkus ! Sorry for my late response ! Could you say me how to do the uplink ? The lopy gateway just need to read the packets, I don't need any downlinks with that.

[catalin]

hi @Harish-kumar, just heads up we'll release this evening (if all tests passed) a solution for your problem.
Out-of-the-box, it will work raw LoRa only.
Are you intending to use LoRaWAN?
Do you have all 3 devices Lopys?
If Lopys, the "gateway" device is connected on Internet over Wifi?

<later edit:> This is the new Lora Mesh release: https://forum.pycom.io/topic/3480/new-firmware-development-release-v1-19-0-b4

[Harish kumar]

@catalin Hi !
1.Yeah I am intended to use LoraWAN, but at the end LoRaWAN is just the formatting of the LoRa Raw payload. So it should work any way or not? The gateway will receive the same payload that was sent by the node A (with sensor)? I have configured device A to use only channels 1, 2 and 3 so I will lose 1 over 3 messages.
2.No. I am not using all the devices as Lopy's. My Transmitting device is Arduino and I use Lopy4 as a repeater(bridge) and it sends to the TTN gateway (multitech).

[catalin]

hi @Harish-kumar , we released here Lora-Mesh, that I thought it will help you.
Well, mesh-network over LoRa, has a specific protocol (Thread), and probably it's not implemented neither in Arduino, nor Multitech.
This would work if all 3 devices would be Lopys, the last one (gateway) would be registering itself to TTN as gateway, and forwarding data from the first Lora (sensor), thru the second one (the repeater, which does this automatically, being a Mesh node - router role).