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LoRaWAN Track-and-Trace

SODAQ LoRaWAN™

The Track-and-Trace Product Kit has been pre-loaded with a demo sketch. Here we will show you how to get this demo running in no-time!

Connect your device

Connect your device

First please check how to create a LoRa device.

After you have created a device using the above link, connect your device to your computer with a USB cable. We will now use a terminal emulator to set up a serial connection with the device, using the correct COM port and baud rate.

Mac OS X

The default is Terminal which you can find in your Utilities folder

  • Open the Terminal App
  • To see a list of all available serial ports, typ Ls /dev/tty.*
  • The port to which the LoRaWAN™ is connected should be /dev/tty.usbmodem1421
  • Typ screen <port-name> <baud_rate> to establish a simple serial connection,
    for example screen /dev/tty.usbmodem1421 57600

If all went well, you should now be connected and see the configuration menu of your Track-and-Trace device

Windows

First we need to know to which COM port our device is connected.

  • Open a command prompt
  • Type powershell to get into powershell command mode
  • To see a list of all available serial ports, type [System.IO.Ports.SerialPort]::getportnames()

Next we will use PuTTy as a terminal emulator to show the settings menu and the communication of the device.

  • Download PuTTy here. No need to install. You can run the downloaded file straight away
  • Open PuTTy
    • Select Serial
    • Enter the correct COM port
    • Enter the correct Baud rate (57600)
    • Open


Regardless of the terminal tool you use, once the serial connection is established, you should see something similar to this



Configure your device

The LoRaWAN™ based Track-and-Trace device will enter into configuration mode

  • when you press the button within 5 seconds after you power on the device
  • or when no device keys are entered yet
    Else the device will start running the demonstrator straight away.

Commands

  • q quit (this will start the demo application)
  • s save the current settings and quit the menu (this will start the demo application)
  • r do a factory reset. This resets all values to their default value

Settings

To run our demo, we need to fill in the credentials of our device. You can find them under 2. CONFIGURE YOUR DEVICE of the setup tab of your device in AllThingsTalk.

  • DEV_ADDR is the DEVEUI for your LoRaWAN™ based Track-and-Trace device. You can also find this key printed on the box of the product kit
  • APPSKEY is the application session key of your device
  • NWKSKEY is the network session key of your device

Fill in these keys using the terminal. The commands to do so are between brackets in the Settings: menu.

Commands used are dev, app and nwk respectively.

For example to set the APPSKEY typ app=26FBF8C4F2CFD09FF8BF19220F584368 (using your own APPSKEY code).

Other parameters

Use accelerometer

There are 2 different modes

  • 0 accelerometer is not used. Interval for sending data is a fixed time interval
  • 1 sending data is triggered by the accelerometer

Command ac, for example ac=0

Accelerometer sensitivity

Set the sensitivity of your accelerometer. Range between 1 and 10.
Command acs, for example acs=6

Interval

Time interval between sending of data in minutes.
Command int, for example int=5

GPS nr of retries

Amount of retries the GPS module attempts to get a fix before giving up.
Command gps, for example gps=11

Run demo application

Create pinboard

To visualise your data, all you have to do is click the New pinboard icon. All pinned controls are preset for you!
For more information on pinboards, please check how to use pinboards.


Track and Trace pinboard

Demo flow

Below you will find a description of the behaviour of the track-and-trace demonstrator. As explained under the accelerometer parameter, there are
two major modes to run your device in. Send GPS coordinates at a fixed interval or use the accelerometer to check and only send when we have acceleration.

No accelerometer (ac=0)



Start up

  • Send battery level

Setup

  • Every 30 seconds, up to retries times or until a GPS fix is found
    • Try get GPS fix
  • If fix is found, send coordinates to the AllThingsTalk cloud
  • Go to sleep

Running

The following is repeated over and over:

  • Wake up after interval minutes
  • Every 5 seconds, up to retries times or until a GPS fix is found
    • Try get GPS fix
  • If fix is found, send coordinates to the AllThingsTalk cloud
  • Go to sleep
  • Battery level is sent every 24h

With accelerometer (ac=1)



Similar Start up and Setup as above

Running

  • First time wake up is when the accelerometer detects acceleration instead of after a fixed interval

The following is repeated over and over:

  • On wake up, first check accelerometer
    • If acceleration is detected, loop as above (find/send coordinates, go to sleep for fixed interval)
    • If no acceleration is detected, go back to sleep until accelerometer detects acceleration