My experience with Zigbee has been poor, but I think it's because so many manufacturers bend the specs and there are incompatibilities. Z-wave just dosen't have those kinds of device specific incompatibility issues.
Nicely explained! I started monitoring the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens using a few LoRa sensors and Home Assistant with the MQTT sensor integration and it works pretty darn sweet. The only drawback so far is that it gets quite messy quickly since the HA yaml config file gets a ton of duplication for all the sensor data. Not sure how to fix that problem yet without making a ChirpStack integration.
It might be possible to write a Chirpstack integration that just generates Home Assistant MQTT discovery entities, or maybe have a script that does that periodically. Basically, you can take the yaml configuration and publish it over MQTT to a well-known topic path, so software that's HA aware can push its own configuration over MQTT and HA will discover and add it automatically.
@@apalrdsadventuresThanks! Yes you're right, doing it the other way round and creating a ChirpStack Integration that pushes the HA MQTT discovery is probably the most elegant way to handle this.
I like that too, but WireGuard can be used in same way, and you have it little bit simplified. Both work over different media, even over DMR ! Because in Unixy you can pipe anything to anything. Reticulum is awesome for big groups where people do not always have to know each other.
This video was incredibly helpful. I bought everything you mentioned and was able to get everything to work. The only issue I'm having is reading data from any sensor connected to the Lora RA-08H Node Board from elecrow. Do you have any example code that pulls data from one of your crowtail sensors? I've tried 4 different sensors on multiple ports and still can't read data.
We are building a vehicle gps tracking system that uses some trackers which support LoRaWAN (ST390), your video was quite handy, even considering that in my trial and error did manage to already set up gateway + chirpstack + my own api integration, the thin is, I used the "HTTP" method chirpstack have for integration instead of MQTT, and noticed that if my api is offline when new data arrives, via this method the data never arrives, like it's stored in chirpstack but since the POST wasn't sucessfull they didn't try again and data is lost. Would using the MQTT method for integration solve this? Also wanna know if using ABP activation instead of OTAA have any drawbacks or problems people sohuld be aware of (Since the device I got doesn't seem to support OTAA)
Cool. I still don't know where the LoRa WAN module is stationed. Is that outside somewhere...perhaps I missed the diagram on how it was setup. Cool project regardless. LoRas for everything nowadays.
Thanks for this between this and the documentation of Chirpstack PS for Raspberry Pi I was able to get a gateway spun up easily. Is it at all possible to the LR1302 hat to be configured as a node/sensor . I have several of these hats .
Great video! Any reason this wouldn't work with a RPI 3 B+ ? Do you run Home Assistant on the RPi and push the cloud data back down for to RPi for display?
Hello @apalrd's adventures, Its a great video with step-by-step explanation on the loraWAN setup. I really appreciated. I have also ordered and assembled the same hardware from Elecrow and give a try to setup loraWAN gateway with your this setup video explanation, but I am sorry and afraid to say that some of your setup commands not working for me. Could you please assist me to fix it? Thanks.
@@apalrdsadventures Thank you for your prompt feedback reply. its so nice of you. I have joined you at discord and will mention the error I am getting to be reviewed by you to fix it. Thanks.
LoRaWAN doesn't really have a way to page the end devices, so it has to wait for the device to send an uplink message to then send commands on the downlink. The whole LoRaWAN architecture is not really designed with latency in mind. So if you want to change settings on a timer, that's fine, but trying to control a pump in real time won't work well.
I just wonder why you didn't went with WIFI HaLow, still gives you at least 1 to 2 Km of range, much faster speeds, and can seamless be integrated in any existing network infrastructure.
Mostly because there are so few devices that natively support HaLow. Most of the HaLow devices I've found are either bare chipsets or HaLow to Ethernet bridges, not complete products.
@@apalrdsadventures well, I pick up a couple of this for less than 50 bucks not expecting much of it, I'm only using one as an access point, dam, this thing gives me internet form 2 km from the house! 16 Mbits at 2 kms! :), I quite impressed by it so far.
Is the MQTT server/broker running on Proxmox, is it a VM or CT? Is the MQTT server/broker mosquitto? Is Home Assistant a VM or CT in your setup? Great presentation.
I am using the MQTT server I already use for Home Assistant, which in my case is Mosquitto in a CT. Home Assistant is a VM (HA OS). I have been using MQTT longer than I've been using Home Assistant (I started with MQTT + Node-Red), so I didn't use the HA OS addon, but that's also a good choice if you are using HA OS. You can run Mosquitto in the same CT as Chirpstack (or on the Pi directly, if you run Chirpstack on the Pi) if you'd like. It doesn't really matter who hosts the MQTT broker.
Not with redundant brokers. All of my HA stuff is running on Proxmox, and I have a separate Proxmox system for the 'important' stuff that I don't mess with regularly.
My board also uses the SX1302 (it's an 8ch LoRaWAN gateway), so it's just different software. Looks like RAK provides Pi OS images which support both Semtech UDP and Chirpstack, so yeah it should work the same way.
I think that I have found another project to keep me busy when I retire. Absolutely fascinating.
Home Assistant on the whole is plenty to keep anyone busy
I swear every time I’m thinking about something, you make a video about it. Great work as always.
Enjoy :)
Another fantastic video! Wanted to say just after 33mins there's lat/long on-screen. Don't want you to dox yourself!
Thanks for letting me know! I thought I caught all of those.
Just forked the vendor's library, wrote examples for the node module and posted it under the bsd license.
You make it look easy :D God bless
Love the deeper dive into code in this video!
Few years ago I did some subghz 868/915 zigbee development. 600m was the limit with our setup.
My experience with Zigbee has been poor, but I think it's because so many manufacturers bend the specs and there are incompatibilities. Z-wave just dosen't have those kinds of device specific incompatibility issues.
Nicely explained! I started monitoring the Amsterdam Botanical Gardens using a few LoRa sensors and Home Assistant with the MQTT sensor integration and it works pretty darn sweet. The only drawback so far is that it gets quite messy quickly since the HA yaml config file gets a ton of duplication for all the sensor data. Not sure how to fix that problem yet without making a ChirpStack integration.
It might be possible to write a Chirpstack integration that just generates Home Assistant MQTT discovery entities, or maybe have a script that does that periodically. Basically, you can take the yaml configuration and publish it over MQTT to a well-known topic path, so software that's HA aware can push its own configuration over MQTT and HA will discover and add it automatically.
@@apalrdsadventuresThanks! Yes you're right, doing it the other way round and creating a ChirpStack Integration that pushes the HA MQTT discovery is probably the most elegant way to handle this.
I think you'd appreciate the reticulum project I recently found it and think it is really really neat lol
I like that too, but WireGuard can be used in same way, and you have it little bit simplified. Both work over different media, even over DMR ! Because in Unixy you can pipe anything to anything. Reticulum is awesome for big groups where people do not always have to know each other.
What a great video.
Glad you like it!
This video was incredibly helpful. I bought everything you mentioned and was able to get everything to work. The only issue I'm having is reading data from any sensor connected to the Lora RA-08H Node Board from elecrow. Do you have any example code that pulls data from one of your crowtail sensors? I've tried 4 different sensors on multiple ports and still can't read data.
We are building a vehicle gps tracking system that uses some trackers which support LoRaWAN (ST390), your video was quite handy, even considering that in my trial and error did manage to already set up gateway + chirpstack + my own api integration, the thin is, I used the "HTTP" method chirpstack have for integration instead of MQTT, and noticed that if my api is offline when new data arrives, via this method the data never arrives, like it's stored in chirpstack but since the POST wasn't sucessfull they didn't try again and data is lost. Would using the MQTT method for integration solve this? Also wanna know if using ABP activation instead of OTAA have any drawbacks or problems people sohuld be aware of (Since the device I got doesn't seem to support OTAA)
Cool. I still don't know where the LoRa WAN module is stationed. Is that outside somewhere...perhaps I missed the diagram on how it was setup. Cool project regardless. LoRas for everything nowadays.
Thanks for this between this and the documentation of Chirpstack PS for Raspberry Pi I was able to get a gateway spun up easily. Is it at all possible to the LR1302 hat to be configured as a node/sensor . I have several of these hats .
Great video! Any reason this wouldn't work with a RPI 3 B+ ? Do you run Home Assistant on the RPi and push the cloud data back down for to RPi for display?
It should work fine on the 3B+. I'm not sure if the Pi 3 would be powerful enough for Home Assistant.
I don't run HA on a Pi, just different radios.
Very Nice, thanks
I like your Linux is Awesome shirt… where did you get it?
It's from vkc.sh (Veronica Explains)
Why you didn’t consider a Mikrotik LoRAWAN router instead the raspberry pi?
Mikrotik's LoRaWAN gateways cost more, that's basically it.
do a followup when you add more devices
Very Fast explanation, but this incredible
Hello @apalrd's adventures, Its a great video with step-by-step explanation on the loraWAN setup. I really appreciated. I have also ordered and assembled the same hardware from Elecrow and give a try to setup loraWAN gateway with your this setup video explanation, but I am sorry and afraid to say that some of your setup commands not working for me. Could you please assist me to fix it? Thanks.
Can you contact me on email or discord? Let me know what errors you’re getting
@@apalrdsadventures Thank you for your prompt feedback reply. its so nice of you. I have joined you at discord and will mention the error I am getting to be reviewed by you to fix it. Thanks.
nice. thx
How about lora relay switch, i would like to controll my submersible pump. Thanks
LoRaWAN doesn't really have a way to page the end devices, so it has to wait for the device to send an uplink message to then send commands on the downlink. The whole LoRaWAN architecture is not really designed with latency in mind.
So if you want to change settings on a timer, that's fine, but trying to control a pump in real time won't work well.
I just wonder why you didn't went with WIFI HaLow, still gives you at least 1 to 2 Km of range, much faster speeds, and can seamless be integrated in any existing network infrastructure.
Mostly because there are so few devices that natively support HaLow. Most of the HaLow devices I've found are either bare chipsets or HaLow to Ethernet bridges, not complete products.
@@apalrdsadventures well, I pick up a couple of this for less than 50 bucks not expecting much of it, I'm only using one as an access point, dam, this thing gives me internet form 2 km from the house! 16 Mbits at 2 kms! :), I quite impressed by it so far.
Silly question. does that Lora Node require a 5v battery because all I see are 3.7v on Amazon.. ;)
I'm using a single 3.7V cell for power
@@apalrdsadventures Thanks for the reply... Love the videos... Keep them coming!!
Is the MQTT server/broker running on Proxmox, is it a VM or CT?
Is the MQTT server/broker mosquitto?
Is Home Assistant a VM or CT in your setup?
Great presentation.
I am using the MQTT server I already use for Home Assistant, which in my case is Mosquitto in a CT. Home Assistant is a VM (HA OS). I have been using MQTT longer than I've been using Home Assistant (I started with MQTT + Node-Red), so I didn't use the HA OS addon, but that's also a good choice if you are using HA OS.
You can run Mosquitto in the same CT as Chirpstack (or on the Pi directly, if you run Chirpstack on the Pi) if you'd like. It doesn't really matter who hosts the MQTT broker.
Have you setup the MQTT broker (Mosquitto) for HA, to avoid that single point of failure issue?
Not with redundant brokers. All of my HA stuff is running on Proxmox, and I have a separate Proxmox system for the 'important' stuff that I don't mess with regularly.
Your a pretty cool dude.
Is it possible to repeat such a project on a RAK2287 Semtech SX1302?
My board also uses the SX1302 (it's an 8ch LoRaWAN gateway), so it's just different software. Looks like RAK provides Pi OS images which support both Semtech UDP and Chirpstack, so yeah it should work the same way.
sorry, and gateway is internet connected, correct? thank you
Gateway can be connected over the internet. If you use Chirpstack then it does not have to be.
bloody hell: snow? I did not see it for last 25 years ;-)
ah lora....ive set on the first row before
So you probably know all of the LoRaWAN gateway options then
@@apalrdsadventurescrazy youtubers just watch but dont rake notes...
Sadly the links in the notes aren’t working
Fixed them all
audio needs a 6db boost