PiWAN - LoRa Gateway Stack

An all-in-one gateway solution for Raspberry Pi + LoRaWAN using BasicStation and Grafana.

Table of Contents

• Project Description
• Prerequisites
• Installation
  • Cloning on a Raspberry Pi
  • Configuring the Gateway
• Usage
• Contributing
• License

Project Description

This project provides a complete LoRaWAN gateway solution that runs on a Raspberry Pi. It includes configuration for BasicStation for LoRaWAN connectivity, integration with Telegraf via TTN MQTT, and Grafana for monitoring. The solution simplifies the deployment of LoRaWAN gateways on edge devices by packaging all necessary services together.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following installed on your Raspberry Pi:

• Docker
• Docker Compose

Installation

Cloning on a Raspberry Pi

1. Open a terminal on your Raspberry Pi.
2. Clone the repository using Git:

   git clone https://github.com/cosmic-pulse/PiWAN.git
   

3. Navigate to the project directory:

   cd PiWAN
   

Configuring the Gateway

1. Rename the gatewaySAMPLE.conf to gateway.conf.

2. Open the gateway.conf file in a text editor:

   nano gateway.conf
   

3. Replace the placeholder values with your actual configuration:

   • YOUR_INFLUXDB_USER: Your InfluxDB username.
   • YOUR_INFLUXDB_PASSWORD: Your InfluxDB password.
   • YOUR_ORGANIZATION_NAME: Your InfluxDB organization name.
   • CHOOSE_A_TOKEN: Generate an InfluxDB admin token.
   • YOUR_TTN_APP_ID: Your TTN application ID.
   • YOUR_TTN_API_KEY: Your TTN API key.
   • YOUR_TTN_REGION: Your TTN region (e.g., nam1).
   • YOUR_GATEWAY_EUI: Your gateway's EUI.
   • YOUR_GATEWAY_API_KEY: Your gateway's API key.

   Save and exit the file.

4. Find the docker group of your RPi/host:

   getent group docker
   

5. Modify the docker-compose.yml file to set the correct group ID for the Telegraf service. Replace 999:0 with the actual group ID you found in the previous step:

   telegraf:
     container_name: Telegraf
     user: "999:<your_group_id>"
   

6. Build and start the Docker containers:

   docker-compose up --build -d
   

Usage

• To start the gateway, run:

  docker-compose up -d
  

• To stop the gateway, run:

    docker-compose down
  

• To view logs for the BasicStation container, run:

  docker-compose logs -f basicstation
  

Once the containers are running, the gateway will connect to the LoRaWAN network and start forwarding data. You can monitor the gateway's performance and metrics using Grafana. Open your web browser and navigate to http://<your-raspberry-pi-ip>:3000.

Troubleshooting & Common Issues

1. Grafana complains about folder access permissions:

Set the folder permissions for Grafana before starting the containers:

cd PiWAN
sudo chown -R 472:472 ./grafana

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository and submit a pull request with your changes.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License.
For further details, please see the LICENSE file.