Infrastructure and payloads

This is the first in a series of posts about building an HTTP Integration for a The Things Network(TTN) application. I have assumed that readers are familiar with the configuration and operation of a TTN instance so I’m not going to cover that in detail.

I’m using a Seeeduino LoRaWAN device as a client so I configured the sample Over the Air Activation(OTAA) application to connect to my local RAK7246 Developer gateway.

#include <LoRaWan.h>

unsigned char data[] = {0x53, 0x65, 0x65, 0x65, 0x64, 0x75, 0x69, 0x6E, 0x6F, 0x20, 0x4C, 0x6F, 0x52, 0x61, 0x57, 0x41, 0x4E};
char buffer[256];

void setup(void)
{
  SerialUSB.begin(9600);
  while (!SerialUSB);

  lora.init();

  memset(buffer, 0, 256);
  lora.getVersion(buffer, 256, 1);
  SerialUSB.print("Ver:");
  SerialUSB.print(buffer);

  memset(buffer, 0, 256);
  lora.getId(buffer, 256, 1);
  SerialUSB.print(buffer);
  SerialUSB.print("ID:");

  lora.setKey(NULL, NULL, "12345678901234567890123456789012");
  lora.setId(NULL, "1234567890123456", "1234567890123456");

  lora.setPort(10);

  lora.setDeciveMode(LWOTAA);
  lora.setDataRate(DR0, AS923);

  lora.setDutyCycle(false);
  lora.setJoinDutyCycle(false);

  lora.setPower(14);


  while (!lora.setOTAAJoin(JOIN, 10))
  {
    SerialUSB.println("");
  }
    SerialUSB.println( "Joined");
}

void loop(void)
{
  bool result = false;

  //result = lora.transferPacket("Hello World!", 10);
  result = lora.transferPacket(data, sizeof(data));

  if (result)
  {
    short length;
    short rssi;

    memset(buffer, 0, 256);
    length = lora.receivePacket(buffer, 256, &rssi);

    if (length)
    {
      SerialUSB.print("Length is: ");
      SerialUSB.println(length);
      SerialUSB.print("RSSI is: ");
      SerialUSB.println(rssi);
      SerialUSB.print("Data is: ");
      for (unsigned char i = 0; i < length; i ++)
      {
        SerialUSB.print("0x");
        SerialUSB.print(buffer[i], HEX);
        SerialUSB.print(" ");
      }
      SerialUSB.println();
    }
  }
  delay( 10000);
}

The SetKey and SetId parameters are not obvious and it would be much easier if there were two methods one for OTTA and the other for Activation by-Personalization(ABP).
I then built an Net Core 3.1 Web API application which had a single controller to receive messages from TTN.

[Route("[controller]")]
[ApiController]
public class Raw : ControllerBase
{
   private static readonly ILog log = log4net.LogManager.GetLogger(System.Reflection.MethodBase.GetCurrentMethod().DeclaringType);

   [HttpGet]
   public string Index()
   {
      return "move along nothing to see";
   }

   [HttpPost]
   public void PostRaw([FromBody]JsonElement body)
   {
      string json = JsonSerializer.Serialize(body);

      log.Info(json);
   }
}

I then configured my TTN application integration to send messages to my shinny new endpoint

My controller logged events to Azure application Insights so I could see if there were any errors and inspect message payloads. The TTN developers provide sample payloads to illustrate the message format but they were a bit chunky for my initial testing.

I could then inspect individual events and payloads

At this point I could download message payloads and save them locally.

{
   "app_id": "rak811wisnodetest",
   "dev_id": "rak811wisnode1",
   "hardware_serial": "1234567890123456",
   "port": 1,
   "counter": 2,
   "confirmed": true,
   "payload_raw": "VGlueUNMUiBMb1JhV0FO",
   "metadata": {
      "time": "2020-08-26T00:50:36.182774822Z",
      "frequency": 924.2,
      "modulation": "LORA",
      "data_rate": "SF7BW125",
      "coding_rate": "4/5",
      "gateways": [
         {
            "gtw_id": "eui-b827ebfffe6c279d",
            "timestamp": 1584148244,
            "time": "2020-08-26T00:50:35.012774Z",
            "channel": 5,
            "rssi": -63,
            "snr": 9.2,
            "rf_chain": 0,
            "latitude": -43.49889,
            "longitude": 172.60104,
            "altitude": 16
         }
      ]
   },
   "downlink_url": "https://integrations.thethingsnetwork.org/ttn-eu/api/v2/down/rak811wisnodetest/azure-webapi-endpoint?key=ttn-account-v2.12345678901234567_12345_1234567-dduo"

}

These were useful because I could then use a tool like Telerik Fiddler to submit messages to my application when it was running locally in the Visual Studio 2019 debugger.