Send sensor data through The Things Network to Cayenne

LoRa The Things Network
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I wrote a blog on howto send sensor data through The Things Network to Cayenne:
https://hansboksem.wordpress.com/2017/03/06/sending-sensor-data-through-the-things-network-to-cayenne/

Your comments are appreciated.

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thanks for positng this @hans.boksem!

I think LoRa and LPWAN technology are fairly new concepts for many people in the maker/developer space. Do you have recommendation on how to get started quickly and with affordable hardware? I know TTN offers free open source network, and Cayenne is free to use as well, so a big barrier to entry for getting started in LoRa space is a lack of knowledge and access to affordable hardware.

@laurencehr I know is interested in deploying some LoRa tech. in his country of Peru :slight_smile:

-B

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With LoRa there are 2 sides of the medal to cope with; the gateway to catch all those message payloads and the nodes that want to send their payload through that gateway. Quite some people have invested their time and money to provide for the best and yet cheapest solution. You can find a lot of articles on thethingsnetwork forum and their labs.

To start small; I like the efforts of Thomas Telkamp to create a cheap 1-channel gateway for downlink only: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/single-channel-gateway-part-1/798
When you want more channels at your disposal you can head over to my dual channel blog post https://hansboksem.wordpress.com/2017/01/23/the-things-network-dual-channel-updownlink-gateway/
These gateways are perfect for lab tests or even tests in a vicinity of a couple of 100meters or so.

But the fun really starts when you have a full blown gateway like explained here: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/
These can range up till 10km and when in sight even up to 100km!
Also they support the full channel set of TTN so you will not miss packets when sent through a channel the 1-channel gateway does not support.

Then coming to nodes, these can be fairly cheap like up from 10-15 euros for rfm95/96/98 based and then a couple of cents for additional sensors or whatever you do with them. (RN2483 is also an option but a few euros more) Just look on the forum of thethingsnetwork where a lot of options are worked out…

You can also buy ready made kits, just head over here for some options: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/devices/

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Hi Hans,

Great blog, I am chewing on it quite some time already, but I still have not a clue what to change in the original arduino code so it will show up in cayenne as it was meant to be. The code I now use for my arduino pro mini is this one:

If you have any suggestions on where and how to start changing this code I would be very obliged.

Thanks already,