MultiTech Developer Resources » Running Basic Station on Conduit

Running Basic Station on Conduit

Code base and documentation

Hardware Requirements

To use basic station an MTCAP or MTCDT with MTAC-LORA-H mCard is required. The Basic Station does not support the MTAC-LORA-1.0 USB cards.
mPower 5.3 includes UI configuration and basic station packages

Connecting to TTN

TTN Basic Station Instructions for Conduit

Logging

The JSON station configuration file has options to enable logging files, level and rotation

https://doc.sm.tc/station/conf.html#logging-setup

The following settings can be used for maximum debugging and rely on the system logrotate process to correctly rotate and gzip files. The Basic Station built-in rotate mechanism does not keep a chronological record over multiple rotate files or compress rotated logs.

“log_file”: “/var/log/lora-station.log”,
“log_level”: “XDEBUG”,
“log_size”: 1000000,
“log_rotate”: 0,

GPS PPS Settings

On MTCDT, MTCAP and MTCAP3 units without GPS hardware can disable PPS sync to reduce log messages for failed timesync with PPS.

{
“SX1301_conf”: {
“lorawan_public”: true,
“clksrc”: 0,
“pps”: false,

Beaconing Settings

Beaconing parameters should come from the LNS. Since the gateway is configured at the LNS for a specific channel plan, the LNS should be setting the gateway beacon.

TTN supports basic station beaconing since 2022.
https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/forum/t/upgrade-to-the-things-network-v3-21-2-completed/58810

Beacon settings can be provided by the LNS in the router_config or default settings can be provided in the station.conf file place the bcning field into the station_conf section.

The bcning field is either None or a BCNCONF object with the following layout:

{
  "DR"    : INT
  "layout": [INT,INT,INT]
  "freqs":  [ INT, .. ]
}

The layout field specifies the octet offsets for insertion of the message fields Time and GwSpecific, followed by the length of the beacom PDU.

// Pack parameters into a BEACON pdu with the following layout:

// | 0-n | 4 | 2 | 1 | 3 | 3 | 0-n | 2 | bytes – all fields little endian

// | RFU | epoch_secs | CRC | infoDesc | lat | lon | RFU | CRC |

//

void s2e_make_beacon (uint8_t* layout, sL_t epoch_secs, int infodesc, double lat, double lon, uint8_t* pdu) {

int time_off = layout[0];

int infodesc_off = layout[1];

int bcn_len = layout[2];

Beacon Frame Format is found in the LoRaWAN 1.0.4 Specification

LoRaWAN® 1.0.4 Specification Package

Layout settings for each spreading factor:

SF8 – [ 1, 7, 19 ]
SF9 – [ 2, 8, 17 ]
SF10 – [ 3, 9, 19 ]
SF11 – [ 4, 10, 21 ]
SF12 – [ 5, 11, 23 ]

Credentials

Select LNS or CUPS depending on server requirements. The LNS protocol will downlink the channel plan from a server. The CUPS protocol and redirect the station process to a network server end-point.

Connecting to TTN Community v3

TTN Instructions

https://nam1.cloud.thethings.network/console
https://eu1.cloud.thethings.network/console
https://au1.cloud.thethings.network/console

https://www.thethingsindustries.com/docs/gateways/lora-basics-station/cups/
https://thethingsindustries.com/docs/gateways/multitechconduit/lbs/

Certificate Information

https://www.thethingsindustries.com/docs/reference/root-certificates/

CUPS

https://nam1.cloud.thethings.network:443
https://eu1.cloud.thethings.network:443
https://au1.cloud.thethings.network:443

Use the following command to view the certificate used by the server.

openssl s_client -showcerts -servername eu1.cloud.thethings.industries -connect eu1.cloud.thethings.industries:443

Using CUPS requires creating two API keys for your gateway. The LNS lbs-lns-secret key will be sent to the gateway over the CUPS protocol. The CUPS key will authenticate the gateway when negotiating the CUPS connection.

Creating API keys for CUPS

URI

Set the URI field to point to a network, in this example a TTI private instance is used.

Connecting to TTN Community

Replace “nam1” with “au1”, “eu1” for the desired region.

wss://nam1.cloud.thethings.network:8887

Station Conf

The default station configuration can be used as the network will configure the channels based on the selected channel plan in the TTI configuration.

Server Certificate

TTN Community certificates

https://www.thethingsindustries.com/docs/reference/root-certificates/

Replace “nam1” with “au1” or “eu1” for the desired region.

openssl s_client -showcerts -servername nam1.cloud.thethings.network -connect nam1.cloud.thethings.network:8887

Use the second certificate output by the open ssl command

Gateway Certificate

If a TLS client cert is required to connect to the server provide a certificate. Otherwise leave this field blank for connecting to TTN v3.

Gateway Key

The Gateway Key can be used to populate the authorization header field or be a TLS client key depending on connection method. The Gateway Key needs to be formatted correctly to be used. In The Things Industries v3 GUI, create an API Key with Link as Gateway permissions and copy the key to the text box preceded by “Authorization: ”

Creating the Gateway key for LNS

Authorization: NNSXS.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

TTN Community gateway key

Currently the TTN Community servers to not authenticate the gateway key. Any value can be set, the file needs have proper contents to allow parsing by the basic station daemon.

Authorization: NNSXS.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX

Click Save and Apply and the station will be started.

Troubleshooting

If there are issues and the station needs to be run manually, you can ssh into the gateway and issue these commands to see output. The station.conf logging feature can also be used to get messages to find any issue details.

$ /etc/init.d/lora-networks-server stop
$ cd /var/run/lora/1
$ sudo ./station

Installation on MTCDT/MTCAP

Install the Basic Station from downloads.

$ sudo -s
# wget http://www.multitech.net/downloads/lora-basic-station_2.0.3-r1.0_arm926ejste.ipk
# opkg install lora-basic-station_2.0.3-r1.0_arm926ejste.ipk

The /opt/lora/station binary will be installed.

Basic Station to Packet Forwarder

This example python script shows how to send a channel configuration to the connection basic station gateway. It is useful for getting started and ensuring the gateway is functioning.
Basic Station Examples

TTI Configuration

The Things Industries provide private server instances that Basic Station can connect to. Visit TTI for details.

tc.uri

wss://<ORG>.<REGION>.cloud.thethings.industries:8887

wss://multitech.eu1.cloud.thethings.industries:8887

tc.key – Gateway Token

The tc.key file needs to be formatted correctly to be used and can be created with this command. In The Things Industries v3 GUI, create an API Key with Link as Gateway permissions and copy the key to the tc.key file.

echo -en "Authorization: NNSXS.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX.XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX\r\n" > tc.key

tc.trust