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Setting up MultiTech LoRaWAN gateway on Ubuntu

As the convener for the Adelaide community of The Things Network, I am frequently setting up Multitech Conduit Gateways. Depending on your PC or notebook hardware you might have some problems with the Exar USB-UART driver on Linux. Here are the steps to getting this unit setup from an Ubuntu (should work for any other Linux distro) machine. lsusb Should show something like this: Bus 002 Device 006: ID 04e2:1410 Exar Corp. XR21V1410 USB-UART IC Download the driver for the Exar site: https://www.exar.com/design-tools/software-drivers unzip xr_usb_serial_common_lnx-3.6-and-newer-pak.zip cd xr_usb_serial_common_lnx-3.6-and-newer-pak make sudo insmod ./xr_usb_serial_common.ko Ensure driver is loaded at startup sudo vim /etc/modules #Add the following xr_usb_serial_common ls /dev/tty* should now show another USB port ttyXRUSB0 For the rest you just need to follow the excellent instructions by Jac Kersing who maintains the Multitech TTN installer and documentation here: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/multitech/mlinux.html Get EUI of your gateway mts-io-sysfs show lora/eui 2> /dev/null | sed 's/://g'

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Moving to KVM virtual machines

Installing VirtualBox is getting increasingly painful on Ubuntu due to the problems with UEFI Secure Boot and the VirtualBox kernel modules. Another reason for an alternative is that running VirtualBox VM's completely in the background is not as straightforward as it could be. From the available alternatives I looked into (VMWare, Xen & KVM) it was KVM that fitted my needs (casual VM usage with mostly headless VM's for testing purposes). Main reasons: Well supported by Ubuntu Easy, straightforward install Background VM's are simple as Moving VM's from one host to another is a breeze Checking system To check if the CPU can actually support egrep -c '(svm|vmx)' /proc/cpuinfo If the number returned is > 0 your systems should be capable to run. You will also enable your BIOS for virtualisation (in Security settings of most BIOS's) if that has not already be done. You will get an error if not enabled if you are trying to run an install. The Install of KVM will work fine. Installation sudo apt-get install qemu-kvm libvirt-daemon-system libvirt-clients bridge-utils virt-manager sudo addgroup libvirtd sudo adduser libvirtd sudo service libvirtd start sudo service libvirtd status sudo virt-manager Moving VM's to another host Source Host virsh shutdown VMNAME virsh dumpxml VMNAME > /tmp/VMNAME.xml scp /tmp/VMNAME.xml TARGETHOST:/tmp/VMNAME.xml scp /var/lib/libvirt/images/VMNAME.qcow2 TARGETHOST:/var/lib/libvirt/images/VMNAME.qcow2 Target Host virsh define /tmp/vm.xml virsh start vm Once you have confirmed operation you probably want to remove the source VM from the Source Host. virsh undefine VMNAME rm /var/lib/libvirt/images/VMNAME.qcow2

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Microchip LoRaWAN Development Utility on Ubuntu

Having just wasted a few hours on getting this Java software running on Linux I am documenting this for future reference and hopefully saving other LoRa / TTN folks some time. Prerequisites Install a Java JDK + JavaFX. This should work with the default OpenJDK 8 or 9 which comes as part of the Ubuntu repositories. I ended up installing Oracle JDK 8 as well as I thought the error might be related to OpenJDK. sudo apt install openjdk-8-jre-headless openjfx Download & install utility Download location: LoRa® Technology Evaluation Kit cd ~/Downloads/ chmod +x LoRaSuite-linux-1.0.run ./LoRaSuite-linux-1.0.run Fix User Preferences This step is required for the Utility to run. Unfortunately, this is documented NOWHERE... Change the following files to include the FilePath entry. The map is empty by default. /home/USERID/.java/.userPrefs/dfu/prefs.xml /home/USERID/.java/.userPrefs/fed/prefs.xml <?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="no"?> <!DOCTYPE map SYSTEM "http://java.sun.com/dtd/preferences.dtd"> <map MAP_XML_VERSION="1.0"> <entry key="FilePath" value="/home/USERID/"/> </map> If you chose the default install location you can now start the utility java -jar ~/Microchip/LoRaSuite/Applications/LoRaDevUtility/LoRaDevUtility.jar A big thank you goes to The Things Network user JBI - who provided this answer in a TTN forum post. No thanks to Microchip as their forum and firmware release policy is a bit of a shocker. There are several reports of such problems in the forum with no answers. Unfortunately, this seems to be no exception with electronics manufacturers (Hello Kerlink!).

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Display your Flickr Favourites as Screensaver Slideshow

Install XScreenSaver and remove Gnome default sudo apt remove gnome-screensaver sudo apt install xscreensaver xscreensaver-gl xscreensaver-gl-extra Run the Screensaver UI and configure In the "Advanced" section enter your Flickr RSS URL in "Choose Random Image" https://api.flickr.com/services/feeds/photos_faves.gne?id=YOURFLICKRUSERID #replace with your Flickr User ID Create a systemd user service to autostart mkdir -p ~/.config/systemd/user/ vim ~/.config/systemd/user/xscreensaver.service Past the following [Unit] Description=XScreenSaver [Service] ExecStart=/usr/bin/xscreensaver -nosplash [Install] WantedBy=default.target Start and enable systemd user service systemctl --user enable xscreensaver systemctl --user start xscreensaver To copy the settings (including RSS URL) onto other PC's or re-install it might be a good idea to backup or copy the contents of ~/.xscreensaver

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Set up a Raspberry Pi Zero headless

If you are using the GUI (Raspian full download) and want to connect your RPi Zero to a keyboard and monitor there are probably easier ways to do this. These notes are for people that want to use a headless (no monitor and GUI) setup ready to connect to your RPi after first boot via SSH from another terminal. "Raspberry Pi Zero W" (CC BY-SA 2.0) by lespounder Download Raspbian Lite wget -O raspbian-lite-latest.zip https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspbian_lite_latest Download link: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ Write Image to SD Card dd bs=4M if=2017-08-16-raspbian-stretch-lite.img of=/dev/sdb After this step there should be 2 additional mounts (if not mount the 2 SD card partitions manually). Set up network interfaces Create a new config file for the wireless interface. cd etc/network/interfaces.d/ vim wlan0.conf Add the following to the new file (if you want to use DHCP - change to static if you want to fix the IP): auto wlan0 allow-hotplug wlan0 iface wlan0 inet dhcp wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf Set up connection details for local wireless network vim etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf Check the file and ensure the network settings are as per the Wireless Network you are connecting to. country=AU ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 network={ ssid="SSID" psk=HASHED_PSK_VALUE } You could use the clear-text PSK passphrase but I prefer not to do that in configuration files. Create a PSK hash using 'wpa_passphrase' this older article There could be other config values you might need depending on the network you are connecting to. More info: https://linux.die.net/man/5/wpa_supplicant.conf. Ensure there are DNS Servers configured sudo vim etc/resolv.conf Add the following to the new…

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Connecting your LoPy to The Things Network in Australia

EDIT [2018-06-05]: I have updated the code with the Firmware 1.18.+ releases. The code is available at our Growing Data Foundation Github. These notes are to assist Australian IoT enthusiasts to get started in connecting a LoPy to The Things Network as it is unfortunately (not yet) straight forward to make them work with the current AU-915 TTN Channel plans. As the initiator of the local Adelaide Community of The Things Network I have been experimenting with a number of devices to connect sensors to #TTNADL. One of my personal favourites is the Pycom LoPy as a nice middle-ground between capabilities and technical complexity. However I ran into a problem where the LoPy would not get a signal back from the TTN network when joining over OTAA even though the TTN Console (http://console.thethingsnetwork.org/) the device showed as connected. With some friendly help from Jose Marcelino at the Pycom Forum this turned out to be an issue with the 915MHz frequency regions. Since there is no actual a standard governing which of the channels are used by TTN gateways, what is outlined here is what is implemented by most TTN communities down under (I know that at least ADL, BNE, SYD and WOL adhere to those). This is the typical Sub-band 2 (Channel 8-15) implementation of AU ISM 915 with TTN Gateways. This channel plan is also implemented by the install script for the MultiTech Conduit Gateways which are currently the most common gateways installed across Australia (see https://github.com/TheThingsNetwork/gateway-conf/blob/master/AU-global_conf.json) Channel#DirectionFrequency MHzBandwidth…

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Using DNSMadeEasy as Dynamic DNS provider on Synology Diskstations

Since Synology (despite requests) still has not added DNS Made Easy as a listed provider (despite listing some really obscure services - go figure!) here is the steps to add a custom provider. DNS Made Easy Setup Create a new A-Record Set the name Set the IP (initial - any valid IP) Tick the "Dynamic DNS" tickbox Enter your chosen Dynamic DNS Password Save the new record When saving the record you will see a "Dynamic DNS ID" - note down this number. This will become the hostname on the Synology setup. Synology Setup Click "Customize" to add a new DDNS provider Name: DNSMADEEASY Query URL http://cp.dnsmadeeasy.com/servlet/updateip?username=__USERNAME__&password=__PASSWORD__&id=__HOSTNAME__&ip=__MYIP__ Click "Add" to add a new DDNS service Service Provider: *DNSMADEEASY Hostname: Dynamic DNS ID from DNS Made Easy Username/Email: your DNS Made Easy email Password/Key: your chosen DNSMadeEasy DDNS password Once you save the new DDNS provider you should see the status to go "Normal" in a green color. This means the update was successful. You should now be able to PING the DNS record or if you log in to DNS Made Easy the IP address should have changed to the external IP of your DiskStation.

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Getting Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i to work on Ubuntu 16.04LTS

Upgrade or install SANE backends Since the version of SANE in the Ubuntu 16.04LTS repos is not working for this scanner you either need to install from sources (see this blog) or from this PPA. sudo add-apt-repository ppa:rolfbensch/sane-git sudo apt update sudo apt install sane-backends tesseract-ocr gscan2pdf Security Add yourself to the 'scanner' group to be able to use the scanner. sudo usermod -a -G scanner USERNAME Checking SANE Check for the libsane version (needs to be at least libsane.so.1.0.26 not libsane.so.1.0.25 which is in the Ubuntu repos) sudo ldconfig -v | grep libsane This should show something like: libsane.so.1 -> libsane.so.1.0.26 Add udev rules for the scanner sudo vim /etc/udev/rules.d/79-scanner.rules #add the following Fujitsu ScanSnap S1300i ATTRS{idVendor}=="04c5", ATTRS{idProduct}=="128d", MODE="0664", GROUP="scanner", ENV{libsane_matched}="yes" Get the firmware for the FUJITSU ScanSnap S1300i sudo mkdir /usr/share/sane/epjitsu cd /usr/share/sane/epjitsu sudo wget https://github.com/ckunte/scansnap-firmware/raw/master/1300i_0D12.nal Testing scanimage -L >> device `epjitsu:libusb:002:027' is a FUJITSU ScanSnap S1300i scanner You can now use gscan2pdf to scan, clean and OCR from the ScanSnap S1300i.

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RaspberryPi Version 3 SOE

Since there is now a supported Raspbian version without GUI and other unneeded add-ons available as Raspbian Lite the need to use other installers (with sometimes some downsides) is now not a necessity anymore. Below is a list of steps I like to perform before using them for any purpose as my Standard Operating Environment. Download Raspbian Lite Download link: https://www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/raspbian/ Write to SD Card dd bs=4M if=2016-05-27-raspbian-jessie-lite.img of=/dev/sdb Boot RPi Default login details are UID: pi PWD: rasbperry Regional settings locale-gen en_AU.UTF-8 dpkg-reconfigure locales ln -sf /usr/share/zoneinfo/Australia/Adelaide /etc/localtime System update sudo apt update && sudo apt -y upgrade apt install vim Setup SSH keys As a security precausion it's a good idea to disable password authentications ssh-keygen -t rsa vim /root/.ssh/authorized_keys # --> add RSA public key Setup Wireless LAN iwlist wlan0 scan wpa_passphrase SSID WPA_KEY vim /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf Copy the resulting hash from the previous command Example config country=AU ctrl_interface=DIR=/var/run/wpa_supplicant GROUP=netdev update_config=1 network={ ssid="YOURSSID" psk=123456789012345678901234567890 } Rename default user account The default Raspbian images use the default user 'pi' - I prefer to change this user to another account for security purposes and to be in line with other Linux system I use. Reboot and log in to the RPi as root - you need to run the following commands as root. usermod -l NEW_USER_ID pi usermod -m -d /home/NEW_USER_ID NEW_USER_ID groupmod --new-name NEW_USER_ID pi mkdir /home/NEW_USER_ID/.ssh/ vim /home/NEW_USER_ID/.ssh/authorized_keys # --> add RSA public key # change owner and permissions on key files chown -R NEW_USER_ID:NEW_USER_ID /home/NEW_USER_ID/.ssh/ chmod 700…

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Install Hugo on Ubuntu to generate static websites

Whilst there is a .DEB installer to download from the GoHugo sites I get all matter of warnings that the package is of bad quality and I am not comfortable to run these kinds of installers. I rather install from sources in this case which is very straight forward since the main dependencies (largely GO) are in the Ubuntu main repositories. Install dependencies sudo apt-get install golang git mercurial python-pygments Create environment variables vim ~/.bashrc #add the following 3 lines export GOROOT=/usr/lib/go export GOPATH=$HOME/go export PATH=$PATH:$GOROOT/bin:$GOPATH/bin Update Bash Environment Variables without logging out. source ~/.bashrc Install Hugo go get -u -v github.com/spf13/hugo Start using Hugo #create new site hugo new sitename /path/to/sitename #change directory to site cd /path/to/sitename #create content page hugo new about.md #edit content page vim content/about.md

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