LoraCaster, the Swiss Army Knife of LoraWan

LoraCaster, the Swiss Army Knife of LoraWan, is a LoraWan TTN compatible firmware for the cheap ESP32/Lora boards.

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                   LoraCaster, the Swiss Army Knife of LoraWan
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                 LoraCaster v.0.0.1 build on Oct 28 2018 21:26:41
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General commands:
   h - shows this help
   v - toggle verbosity
   l - toggle led
Communication commands:
   p[hex payload]! - charge payload in the memory max 1k byte
   d - dump actual payload present in the memory
   S - start transmission
   H - halt transmission
Advanced commands:
   t - send a Test message with content 0123456789 (ASCII)
   c - shows LoraWan/TTN Configuration
   b[]! - set message dimension in byte 0-100 (actual 100)
   r - toggle retransmission (actual 0)
   w[value]! - set delay between packets in second 0-255 (actual 0)
   f[] - set spreading factor between 7,8,9,10,11,12 (actual 7)
   R - generate a new random packet ID (actual 0x53 0x12)
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General commands

• h - shows help and main configurations .
• v - enable/disable verbose debug messages.
• l - toggle the status of the blue led on the board.

Communication commands

• p[hex payload]! - load the hex payload passed in the board memory (MAX 1k byte).
• d - dump the actual payload present in the board memory.
• S - start the transmission of the payload present in memory. The payload is broken on chunks compatibles with the maximum message dimension (set with b command).
• H - set the halt flag, next transmission will be halted.

Advanced commands:

• t - send a Test message with content 0123456789 (ASCII), this command set the halt flag in order to stop next message.
• c - shows LoraWan/TTN configuration in hexadecimal format.
• b[]! - set the message maximum dimension in byte 0-100.
• r - toggle retransmission flag (useful for transmit the same payload many times)
• w[]! - set delay between packets in second 0-255.
• f[] - set spreading factor between 7,8,9,10,11,12.
• R - generate a new random packet ID

Communication protocol

The payload is exploded in n messages based on message maximum dimension. Every message has the following format:

1. LWC - magic number (3 bytes )
2. * - separator (1 byte)
3. 00 - packet ID (2 bytes) same ID for the same parts of the same payload
4. * - separator (1 byte)
5. 0 - message number (1 byte) progressive message counter
6. 0 - total messages (1 byte) number of total messages needed to have the complete message
7. * - separator (1 byte)
8. ... - informative content (1-100 bytes) part of the complete message to be transmitted

Available boards

The firmware is actually tested on the following boards:

• TTGO ESP32 Lora (with or without OLED)
• HelTec WiFi Lora 32 v.1 - consider to buy a v.2

Usage examples

Some examples are provided in order to use LoraCast in some real scenarios:

• File - move a file in the memory of the board, send in via Lora and receive with provided python script.
• BTC - generate a new transaction (via RPC), send it via Lora, receive the complete transaction, check and broadcast it (using the RPC available from a core node) - Require a Bitcoin core working node.
• LTC - generate a new transaction (via RPC), send it via Lora, receive the complete transaction, check and broadcast it (using the RPC available from a core node) - Require a Litecoin working node.