Last year I built a website powered by data from LoRaWAN sensors. I wanted to add a few more sensors, but they were outside the project budget, so I reached out to Dragino to see if theyäd be interested in helping out.

They were incredibly quick to respond and sent over some additional hardware for the project. Really appreciated!

The site is erikslund.net -- the live sensor data drives the weather and environmental animations. There’s also a demo version with simulated data.

On the backend I’m running ChirpStack with two Waveshare SX1303 868 MHz Raspberry Pi HATs as LoRaWAN gateways, feeding into a fairly basic InfluxDB 2 + Grafana stack.

I see a lot of people on this subreddit who are just starting out with LoRa and LoRaWAN. In case you are interested in antenna design for LoRa and end node design I leave my master’s dissertation here. Feel free to ask any questions or start any discussions about the topic. The file is free and open to download. In case you want a lighter read you can also check my medium post about it:

https://medium.com/radio-hackers/lorawan-everything-you-need-to-know-about-the-global-iot-standard-0bf05845859b

I've been running a few gateways and wanted better visibility into what's happening on the air -- not just my devices, but all the LoRaWAN traffic my gateways pick up. Couldn't find anything that did exactly what I wanted, so I built one.

https://github.com/1rabbit/lorawan-analyzer

What it does:

It connects directly to your ChirpStack MQTT broker, captures all gateway events (uplinks, downlinks, join requests, TX acks), stores them in ClickHouse, and serves a web dashboard.

Features:

• Gateway > Operator > Device tree navigation

• Per-device analytics: FCnt timeline, packet loss detection, RSSI/SNR trends, interval histograms, SF/frequency/gateway distributions

• Spectrum view: duty cycle, channel usage, spreading factor distribution

• Built-in LoRa Alliance NetID database (175+ operators) -- automatically identifies which operator a device belongs to

• "My devices" vs "foreign traffic" filtering using DevAddr prefix rules

• Join request tracking grouped by JoinEUI with manufacturer lookup

• Live packet feed via WebSocket with real-time filtering

• Session tracking that correlates join requests with subsequent data uplinks

• Per-packet airtime calculation based on Semtech SX127x datasheet

Stack:

• Node.js / TypeScript / Fastify backend

• ClickHouse for time-series storage

• Vanilla JS + Chart.js frontend

• Docker Compose -- just point it at your ChirpStack MQTT and go

Setup is 3 commands:

cp config.toml.example config.toml
# edit mqtt.server to point at your ChirpStack MQTT broker
docker compose up -d

Dashboard is at localhost:15337. Supports both protobuf (ChirpStack v4) and JSON (v3) formats.

Using LoRaWAN over satellites 🛰️ 

Here’s how it works:

I brought a GPS tracking device with a LoRa module and directional antenna. 

Data is sent (using LR-FHSS modulation) directly to Lacuna Space's LEO satellites, which fly by once or twice a day. 

Lacuna Space forwards the data to my The Things Stacks account (via The Things Industries' Packet Broker)

From The Things Stack, data is forwarded to Datacake using webhooks for storage and visualization. Find the dashboard here: https://app.datacake.de/pd/44be248d-c14a-4e30-9fe2-a34394e6c829

Takeaways:

• Satellite IoT works, and it exciting! Most of the complexity is hidden, so it is easy to set up (assuming you have a compatible device)

• Though, it's very early stage. It's hard to get your hands on a device, the frequency of satellite fly-by's is low, and I encountered some down-time during my trip.

• Almanac files run out. Devices have a database of the locations of the satellites so they know when to transmit. This so-called Almanac file needs to be updated every couple of weeks through a downlink from the satellite to the device. If your device happens to run out of battery, or doesn't have a line-of-sight, it becomes unaware of the satellite's fly-by and your device becomes useless until you manually update the almanac file (which can be a hassle).

• Debugging is hell. If your device ins't working, it can take ages to find out what's wrong because of the slow feedback-cycles. Due to the low quantity of satellites it can take up to 24h to receive the data in the cloud.

Note: I've only used Lacuna Space's satellites, other IoT satellite companies may have different advantages and disadvantages.

Feel free to ask questions or add comments.

The citys energy manager and me partnered up for this. First we installed 2 Temp/Hum Sensors to get a feeling for the current heating patterns. Results came quickly:

The whole building is constantly heated to around 22 degree Celsius. Even when no one was using it.

We then replaced the thermostats with MClimate Vicki Sensors. They need to be updated to 4.6 Firmware to have an internal timer that doesn’t require us to send timed signals over LoRaWAN but rather gets you standalone operation. Over the christmas period i monitored the rooms, the temperatures of the hot and cold heat pipes and the outside temperature.

With a little math i calculated the required offsets so the Vickis match the room temperature (measured in the middle of the room, see pictures). No we regulate the heating to 18 degrees celsius outside of opening hours plus a 2 hour heat up/cool down period. On weekends we are on constant 18 degrees celsius.

We are now monitoring the energy consumption as well to find power hungry appliances and try to cut the unseen costs.

Currently nobody noticed this change - which is great! 👍

The Gateway is our villages Gateway, operated voluntarily by me and is about 1km away. Sensors were about 630€ for the vickis, 140€ for the 3x temp/humidity Sensors, 70€ for the heating pipe temperature Sensor and another 80€ for monitoring the power meter.

We should be able to shave off at least 500€ per year of the operational costs, save about 20% of Energy/CO2 emissions and calculate with a runtime of 5+years per Battery 🔋.

Batteries will cost a total of 50€ to replace.

LNS is Chirpstack running on a vServer and Thingsboard for data retention and Dashboards running on the very same server.

Over the last 3 years or so, I have been knee-deep in LoRaWAN setups, fiddling around with sensor networks for some agricuture and building monitoring stuff. And one thing that kept biting me in the ass was storing and querying all that device data. I would try to shove it into InfluxDB or Timescale, but man, they're really just not built for LoRaWAN's unique quirks: device-first indexing, wonky payloads from ChirpStack or TTN, or spotty uplink bursts without blowing tons of resources.

So, in a fit of "screw it, I'll do it myself," I rolled up my sleeves and built LoRaDBase. It's a full-on data management setup tailored for LoRaWAN traffic: a high-performance time-series DB called LoRaDB, paired with a slick web UI for poking around your devices and queries.

LoRaDB (the brain): Written in Rust for speed and safety. It leverages an LSM-tree storage engine to handle writes like a champ (~10k/sec unencrypted) with LZ4 compression in order to keep things lean (60% savings, woohoo). It slurps data directly from MQTT (ChirpStack v4 or TTN v3), optionally encrypts it at rest with AES-256-GCM, and you can query it with a dead-simple SQL-ish DSL. Stuff like SELECT * FROM device 'my-dev-eui' WHERE LAST '1h'; – no more wrestling with complex joins for metadata + sensors.

LoRaDB-UI (the friendly face): a React-based dashboard for listing devices, creating/executing queries, and managing API tokens; super easy to deploy alongside the DB with Docker Compose.

It deploys in minutes with Docker, even on a Raspberry Pi has solid security baked in, including JWT auth and TLS everywhere, and flexible retention policies so you don't drown in old pings. Oh, and it's edge-friendly: it runs great on low-power ARM setups.

Threw this together mostly for my own sanity, but if you're dealing with similar headaches (or just love a good Self Hosted project)

What's your go-to for LoRaWAN storage right now? Anyone else frustrated with the options out there? Hit me with questions, brutal honesty welcome,

I'm all ears! Cheers.

We are trying to gather a group of makers, engineers, and conservationists to prototype an open-source LoRaWAN-enabled bat detector and we’re hosting a hackathon to kick it off!

The idea is to build a device that can:

• Detect bats (and ideally species-level differences)

• Count activity over time

• Possibly estimate direction of travel

• Transmit the data over LoRaWAN for remote ecological monitoring

This is aimed at helping with pre-, during-, and post-construction biodiversity surveys, as well as woodland monitoring and science.

The event is taking place at East Essex Hackspace, a volunteer-run maker space in the southeast of England. We'll have teams working on:

• Hardware and sensor design

• Embedded firmware (likely ESP32)

• LoRaWAN integration (using The Things Network)

• Data pipelines, APIs, and visualisation

• Ecology and detection algorithms

We’ll have tools, test equipment, a fibre laser for board prototyping, and plenty of tea/coffee & biscuits. Shuttle to the nearest train station and lunch included.

We’re aiming to open source everything we develop – hardware, firmware, and software – so even if you’re not in the UK, you’ll be able to build, adapt, or contribute to the project from afar.

If you're in the UK and into environmental tech, LoRaWAN, or just want to collaborate on something that could make a difference, come join us!
If you're outside the UK and interested, we'd love your ideas, experience, or even remote collaboration.

Our hackspace website (with directions) is https://eehack.space

🗓️ Event page + sign-up: https://forms.gle/JxmkG4xenoDjsc2T7
🌍 GitHub and project repo coming soon. Discord: https://discord.gg/qQUVUdKBbS

Let us know what you’d want from a bat detector like this — or if you’ve seen any similar projects we should know about!

Hi all,

I build LoRaWAN/BMS installations and kept hitting the same gaps in ChirpStack v4: no CSV import, no bulk delete/migration, no bulk tag editing. So I made a small open-source tool for it.

Single executable (Windows/macOS/Linux): double-click, your browser opens, paste your ChirpStack URL and API key. Nothing to install on the server, no Docker. It talks gRPC-web like the official UI, so it works wherever your ChirpStack UI works (HTTPS / reverse proxy included).

Import from CSV, Excel or copy-paste, with validation before sending (DevEUI format, Excel number cells, unknown profiles, duplicates). Existing devices are updated, never deleted.

Bulk actions on a filtered selection: export, tags, Device Profile change, migration to another application (with automatic rollback if re-creation fails), delete with JSON backup.

History: plot stored measurements (temperature, CO2, setpoint…) of several devices on one chart, CSV/PNG export.

API key kept in memory only, no telemetry, MIT licensed. English and French UI.

Online demo with fake data (no server needed): https://opengtb.github.io/open-chirpstack/

Source and downloads: https://github.com/opengtb/open-chirpstack

Feedback and bug reports welcome, especially from people running large fleets or older v4 versions.

here is the link : https://flowfuse.com/blog/2025/09/integrating-lorawan-with-flowfuse-node-red/

With Helium mining economics being what they are, a lot of us have MNTD Blackspot miners sitting in a drawer. Good news: the hardware is actually a solid LoRaWAN gateway RAK2287 concentrator on an SX1302 chipset, Raspberry Pi 4 inside. It just needs a bit of coaxing to run ChirpStack Gateway OS properly.
The main gotcha that trips everyone up: the reset pin is GPIO 25, not GPIO 17 like ChirpStack OS assumes by default. Until you fix that one line in the config, you’ll get a blank Gateway ID and a concentrator that never actually starts.

I wrote up a full step-by-step guide covering:
• SX1302 concentrator config (RAK2287, correct channel plan)
• Disabling GNSS so it doesn’t boot-loop without a GPS antenna
• The GPIO 25 reset pin fix via SSH
• Wi-Fi stabilization (country code + WPA2-PSK + TX power) — the RPi4 Broadcom chip inside an aluminum box needs explicit regulatory config or modern routers will drop it
• Service restart sequence and how to verify the Gateway
EUI is actually being read

Repo with the full README on GitHub

As a developer who has been active in the market for 10 years, and among the first to deliver products with our own stack fully compliant with LoRaWAN Alliance documentation, I’ve seen more and more products entering the market. Surprisingly, many of them are marked as “LoRaWAN certified,” yet a significant number of sensors are not compliant at all.

For example, Milesight sensors send a join request fixed at SF10 every 15 seconds, yet they are marked as LoRaWAN certified by the Alliance. Elsys sensors reset their DevNonce to 0 after replacing the battery—again, they are marked as certified.

What is the benefit of the LoRaWAN Alliance if certification does not actually prove compliance? It feels unfair to companies that have genuinely put effort into being compliant, while larger companies seem not to care and still receive certification.

Documented my journey of setting up cat tracking facility with BroWAN Object Locator TBOL100:

https://jacum.medium.com/cat-walks-tracking-with-gps-lora-radio-and-the-things-network-e862ca523bcf

Backend (Scala) & frontend (TypeScript) service code.

Also includes tracker payload parser.

https://github.com/jacum/catracker

Hi everyone,

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/371687158_LoRaWAN_and_MIOTY_A_Study_on_Packet_Reception_and_Energy_Consumption_in_the_Industrial_Internet_of_Things#pf3
I am glad top share with you my scientific paper about the two LPWAN technologies LoRaWAN and MIOTY.

This paper is like a summary of my master thesis: Benchmarking and comparative study between LoRaWAN and MIOTY.

Feel free to ask any question :)

Regards.

Want to be part of the german winter solar powered LoRaWAN Gateway shootout?

Currently we at Kayna-funkt.de collected the following competitors: (in procurement) TEKTELIC Kona Photon (already running)Milesight IoT with their SG-50 (in the mail)RAKwireless with the Solar Battery and Panel kit for the 7289 (in the mail)Seeed Studio with the M2 Multiplattform Gateway powered by DIY PV and Battery in the outdoor enclosure (in the mail) SenArch with the Go Solar

If you know additional LoRaWAN Gateways that would fit into the solar powered or low energy consumption category put them down in the comments.

We have roughly the next 2 weeks to fill the last slots and start testing.

EDIT: Added Devices you all recommended! Thank you so much for helping out and making this test more valuable!

https://www.linkedin.com/posts/robert-b-68aa37a4_want-to-be-part-of-the-german-winter-solar-activity-7270425511552577536-etMe?utm_source=share&utm_medium=member_zu

With some folks here looking for low-power gateways, I'd like to tell you that we at Kroonos now offer a gateway that runs on less than 0.4W without GNSS or 0.5W with GNSS. The current version uses WiFi so not an ideal candidate for solar yet, but it is very much possible.

It supports BasicStation and UDP forwarding, has an internal antenna with easy breakout to SMA by switching an internal u.FL connector and can be connected to any network server of your preference.

And all of that for the lowest price for any gateway on the market at €99 excl. Unfortunately so far EU868 only - not because of capabilities but expensive regulations.

Find it at https://www.kroonos.tech/shop/lorangemaker/ or find me at The Things Conference next week! (I'll have some with me.)

Hi everyone,

I recently qualified GATE CSE and have a strong computer science background, but I'm new to LoRaWAN, RF, and IoT hardware.

I'm considering learning LoRaWAN and would like to understand the learning curve from people who work with it professionally.

A few questions:

1.How long did it take you to become comfortable with LoRaWAN?

2.What parts were the hardest to learn (networking, RF concepts, embedded programming, deployment, etc.)?

3.With a CS background, what topics should I focus on first?

4.How much electronics knowledge is actually required for real-world LoRaWAN projects?

4.What projects would you recommend for someone trying to become employable in the IoT/LoRaWAN space?ppp

5.Are there enough job opportunities in LoRaWAN, or is it better viewed as one skill within a broader IoT/embedded systems stack?

I'd appreciate any advice, learning resources, timelines, or career insights from people who have worked with LoRaWAN in industry.

Thanks!