3.5. LoRa

The vlora interface allows a ME to communicate with LoRa devices.

Warning

Not yet implemented

3.5.1. LoRa transceiver

The LoRa transceiver supported is the RN2483 mounted on a LoRa click board. The RN2483 provides a UART interface to send and receive LoRa messages. It can be configured using commands sent directly to the serial port. A user space applications for test purposes and a firmware updater are available in a separate repository click-boards.

3.5.2. RN2483 driver

A RN2483 driver has been implemented to communicate with the RN2483 directly from the Linux kernel. It uses the serdev framework to access the serial port. To assign a serial port to the driver the following device tree subnode must be added to the chose UART:

&uart<nr> {

    ...

    status = "okay";

    lora {
        compatible = "lora,rn2483";
        current-speed = <57600> /* default baudrate */
    };
};

The driver allows other drivers to subscribe to it. When new data is received each subscriber will receive it. A send data function is available to send data through LoRa.

3.5.3. RN2483 commands and LoRa string data

The commands supported by RN2483 are available in the RN2483 LoRa User’s Guide. The table below shows only the currently implemented commands:

Command string	Arguments	Description
sys reset	None	Reset and restart the RN2483 module
sys get ver	None	Returns information related to hardware platform
mac pause	None	Pause LoRaWan stack functionality for <args> ms
radio tx	data string	String of hexadecimal values to be transmitter
radio rx	0	Enable continuos reception mode. It will wait until data is received
radio stoprx	None	Stop continuos reception mode. For example to send data.
radio set wdt	0 - 2^32	Update the timeout length in ms. Set to 0 to disable

Note

In order to correctly setup the device for non LoRaWAN transmission you must first set send the command mac pause, then disable the watchdog radio set wdt 0 and finally the radio tx or radio tx commands can be used.

When the driver is probed it performs all necessary action and sets itself in continuos reception mode. If the send data function is called the reception mode will be stopped, the data will be sent and the reception is reenabled.