How do I create a stand alone Pymesh?

[Campbell Duncan]

Hi!

How do I create a stand alone Pymesh? I want to send sensor data from several boards to a receiver board that can display the data on a screen and can send commands to other controller devices.
I can't use internet connection to run the network and I don't want to be connected to a Things network. I'm starting to think I can't use the online Pybytes to program the boards and I don't know what to set, to do what I want in VS Code.
Any help, tutorials or examples would be appreciated.
Thanks!

[Gijs]

Hi,

Have a look at the documentation here: https://docs.pycom.io/pybytes/pymeshintegration/

You'll first need to load the Pymesh firmware over WiFi and select the proper border routers (which are used to gather the packets sent in the mesh and send them to Pybytes. Then, after loading the firmware, you should de-select the WiFi network option from the device, meaning they will only use LoRa for the mesh.

The issue then, is that you cannot use the Pymesh to program any micropython on the device, as they're not connected over Wifi or LTE (LoRa, SigFox and especially the Pymesh does not allow the transfer of large packets, making programming very tedious and not supported by Pymakr Online).

You can find more information about the Pymesh here: https://docs.pycom.io/pymesh/

[Campbell Duncan]

@Gijs Thank you for the reply.

I've done a lot of studying but networking is not my strong suit. (That's why I went with pycom development boards to take care of networking)
If I set up a stand alone lora mesh network with WiFi and LoRa, then disable the WiFi, how is the LoRa network authentication done? In a Pymesh network, is the connection to the network raw and the OTAA just an encryption for the message?
I was hoping to connect up networks like a typical WiFi network with a password. Is this possible on a LoRa network? If it is, how can I do it? Do I have it all wrong and the authentication is similar to WiFi?
Thanks.