ha_ru (u/ha_ru) - Readit News

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

lukaroli · a year ago

Great project! Is there any mechanism implemented to ensure compliance with the EU regional limitations of the maximum duty cycle in the 868-870 MHz bands? ZigBee can be quite chatty as it operates on the unrestricted 2.4 GHz bands.

ha_ru · a year ago

Yes, in fact we actually re-transmit the absolute minimum information (device join/sensor values) to ensure that the LoRaWAN link does not saturate. Data compression helps too and a user can also disable re-transmission of some meta-data, like link quality/battery level.

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

windexh8er · a year ago

This is a fantastic idea, thanks for sharing. I feel like LoRaWAN and LoRAMESH are the perfect solution for shuffling messaging around for home and property sensors, easily traversing a couple miles in poor conditions.

Prior to seeing this I was thinking about how to use the Meshtastic [0] project to fundamentally provide simple UDP services for message brokering over LoRa. There are so many sensors that could easily hook or connect to devices acting as network routers that could bridge other protocols across long distances very easily.

Have you looked at doing something similar with ZWave at all?

[0] https://meshtastic.org/

ha_ru · a year ago

Thanks! We haven't looked at Zwave yet, but meshtastic and some other lora based mesh network stacks are familiar. One more interesting project is Recticulum with its RNodes: https://unsigned.io/rnode/

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

blagie · a year ago

First of all, this is not an attack or intended to be negative. I often get attacked or downvoted for constructive feedback on Show HN (where that's what it's here for). This is intended as feedback. I give feedback to the best projects and to the worst.

With that out of the way:

Many of us have never heard of LoRa. There is no way to know in 60 seconds what this project does, or why it is useful. I would recommend adding a sentence to the effect of:

"LoRa is a low-cost long-range wireless communications protocol. This project provides hardware and software to allow zigbee devices to communicate over LoRa, allowing placement of such devices far from the zigbee hub."

That's a small but big improvement. Next improvements:

- Discuss maximum range / interference

- Add an English option to the project page

- Minor: Reorganize the page to be more directive about how to get started ("Buy X, do Y, etc. in a tutorial format"). This can even just be a pointer to the relevant pages ("Buy the hardware list on [this page]. Install the software per [this page]")

That's a first impression. Feel free to post again. Show HN is a nice place to get first impressions, which have a surprisingly big impact on adoption.

ha_ru · a year ago

Your points are valid. Especially the ones on educating an interested user about what the project is good for and how to get started. Thank you for the feedback!

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

dementik · a year ago

This is great, thanks for doing this!

I think it is somewhat common situation, when home zigbee network does not reach e.g. garage or some other near-distance building. Usually there is some ethernet/wifi network on the satellite building. So distances what LoRaWAN can reach, are not probably even needed.

Read a bit about the implementation, but I think it is easier to just ask: Could this work over general TCP somehow?

ha_ru · a year ago

Thanks! Your question is an interesting one: Forwarding TCP over LoRaWAN seems at first impossible due to large packet sizes (from LoRa perspective!). It turns out there have been some efforts to apply dictionary based compression methods to carry different protocols over LoRaWAN. You might want to check out RFC 8376 for details.

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

dmos62 · a year ago

That's awesome. How did you fund the project?

ha_ru · a year ago

Thank you! We received a Netidee grant (https://www.netidee.at/), which is a popular funding source for Austrian open source projects with a focus on Internet technologies.

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

yjftsjthsd-h · a year ago

I'm surprised to see the Pi in there; I would naively expect a microcontroller (my first thought today would be https://www.espressif.com/en/products/socs/esp32-c6 but there are options). Is this arrangement a matter of how easy it is to implement, age of the project (predating good MC options), or a harder technical/practical blocker?

ha_ru · a year ago

We actually thought about a pure microcontroller solution, but stuffing a zigbee coordinator, a mqtt parser and a lorawan stack into an uC seemed a bit overwhelming. It is technically possible with beefier SoCs, but as most ingredients we needed were well available for a PI, we went this route while building the first prototype.

ha_ru commented on Show HN: Extend Zigbee sensor range with LoRaWAN github.com/lorabridge... · Posted by u/ha_ru

ha_ru · a year ago

Hi! This project (LoRaBridge) was born few years ago as I was trying to figure out how to get data from the cheap Zigbee sensors in my cellar. In my case, the cellar is not immediately below the main living space, so the Zigbee range even with some repeater nodes was just not enough. One day, out of curiosity, I bought two LoRa modems, mounted one of them in the cellar and the second one in the 2nd floor of the house. I was blown away by the fact that I got a stable connection through so much concrete(!). That was pretty much the light bulb moment for how my solution would look like.

Fast forward 2-3 years, after a (funded!) open source project, there is now a way to mount Zigbee sensors in remote locations. Essentially the solution is a wireless bride, which works like this:

- A remote Raspberry PI unit collects&compresses zigbee data and transmits it over LoRaWAN

- LoRaWAN gateway/servers forward the data towards second PI, which decompresses the data ,takes care of the device management and sends the data further to, e.g., home assistant.

And as a bonus: The device joining process is as easy as it is with zigbee2mqtt ;)