LoraWan Gateway & IAQ Sensor Integration — Part 1
In Part One, I go into setting up a LoraWan Gateway and IAQ Sensor.
I recently purchased a Browan MiniHub Pro Indoor LoRaWAN Gateway — 868 Mhz and a Browan Tabs Smart Building Sensors — Indoor Air Quality EU868 from connected things. You find them here:
https://connectedthings.store/gb/
Setting up the Gateway:
On your mobile phone connect to the the MiniHub’s wifi network on 192.168.4.1. This will allow you to connect the gateway to your wifi network. Once its connected you can log onto the gateway and configure it via the web interface. An extensive setup doc can be found below:
https://www.browan.com/download/PmN/stream
Before going to the LoraWan setup, you need the gateway to send the data somewhere. I signed up The Things Industries Discovery Plan, which is Free. See:
Add your Gateway to TTI. Once setup they will provide you with a gateway address. This is where your gateway will send the sensor data. From the Gateway Manual:
Back on the Gateway — there are 2 LoraWan settings you can choose from. Packet forwarder or Basic Station. I tried to get Basic Station to work, but couldn’t. I contacted connected things and they said Basic Station is a bit fiddly, instead use the Packet Forwarder. A big thank to connected things as I was stuck on this one for a few hours. Accept the default settings for Packet Forwarder. Enter the gateway server address provided by TTI, in the format myloraapp.eu1.cloud.thethings.industries. The green light on the gateway will stay green if its all up and running. You can see the data from the Gateway on the TTI dashboard:
Setting up the Sensor
With the Gateway setup, you literally just need to power cycle the sensor. Because it doesn’t have a power button, remove the cover, remove and replace the small battery inside. Back on TTI, Add An Application using the EUI numbers provided by connected things (also found on the sensor itself). Within 5 minutes you should be able to see data being upload:
And that’s it for setting up the Gateway and Sensor. I was really impressed with the easy setup and the potential of LoraWan.
In Part 2, I’ll show you how to get the sensor data to another application.
Connnecting to View Builder IOT™©
More info on VB IOT:
https://viewbuilder.io/product-services/view-builder.html
Connecting to our solution is similar to TTN. Here are the step:
- On View Builder IOT add the gateway. You will need the gateway id.
2. On your Gateway run through the setup again, but for the Gateway Server address, enter the URL provided by us. e.g. app.viewbuilder.io
3. Then select the local internet connection where the gateway is. If its wireless, the network key is required. Note: The reason this is done is because once its connected the gateway won’t allow you to log onto to it via the gateways browser for security reason. You will have to run the setup again if you want to change any settings.
4. Follow the steps on our platform to add a device profile, application, and device.
5. Thats it! The gateway will start sending data to View Builder and you can view them under the data sources section.
In Part 2, I’ll show you how to get the sensor data from View Builder IOT.
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
