Achievement unlocked

Finally after weeks of careful planning, installing and configuring of software components as well as programming, the first prototype version of the LoRaBridge range extender is ready. As depicted in the above figure, we have selected Zigbee as the short range protocol of choice due to its huge popularity in wireless sensor market. With the help of the zigbee2mqtt Zigbee gateway tool, we are able to extract the sensor devices as well as the sensor data in MQTT format. This data becomes later compressed and sent via custom made LoRaWAN link from the LoRaBridge "Bridge unit" towards the "Gateway unit", which servers a LoRaWAN application server. With this setup, we we're able to deliver first data packets stemming from a temperature sensor all the way up to the LoRaWAN application server. This marks an important milestone of the project, as we were able to demonstrate the feasibility of short-range/long-range wireless extender interface.

Further steps

The intensive work goes on: As an important next step, we want to improve the data compression methods to e.g. carry multiple sensor readings within a single LoRaWAN packet. Additionally, we are in the progress to deploy all the necessary software frameworks to containers and enable scripting based configuration. Finally, a home-assistant container shall be employed to visualize and to demonstrate the utilization of the forwarded sensor data in a realistic home-automation use-case.