Advertising Packets or Beacon Signals in RAK Wireless LoRa Devices

WisBlock
1

Hello RAK Wireless Community,

I’m currently exploring the capabilities of RAK Wireless LoRa devices for a project, and I’m curious about the presence of features similar to advertising packets or beacon signals, commonly found in technologies like Bluetooth or Wi-Fi.

Specifically:

  1. Advertising Mechanism: Do RAK Wireless LoRa devices support any form of advertising packets or beacon signals that can be used for device discovery or presence indication?
  2. Beacon-Like Functionality: Is there a standardized or recommended approach for implementing beacon-like functionality in RAK LoRa devices, if not available by default?
  3. Use Cases: Have any community members successfully implemented or experimented with advertising or beacon-like features in their LoRa projects using RAK Wireless devices? If so, could you share your experiences and insights?

I’m keen to understand the capabilities of RAK LoRa devices in this regard and appreciate any information or guidance from the community.

Thank you for your assistance!

2

Hi @stalin ,

I rarely use BLE but I can share you links related to this.

If you are using RAK4631 (Not RUI3) - you can check our BLE LED demo here

If you are using RAK4631-R (based on RUI3), you can check some examples in our RUI3 BLE Documentation.

3

Hi,is there any thing related for advertising or getting rssi of nearby device in the sdk itself

4

Are you talking about BLE or LoRaWAN/LoRa P2P?

In LoRaWAN/LoRa P2P there is no advertising or beacon like functionality.

For BLE, we have some examples in our Documentation Center

5

yes iam talking about Lorawan/lora p2p. i got to know about these two radio commands RADIO_SET_TXCONTINUOUSWAVE
RADIO_SET_TXCONTINUOUSPREAMBLE
can i send device id or any packet through this command .

6

These commands are for certification purposes, not for normal LoRa functionality.

7

I have used beacon and advertising features in my projects. But there are legal restrictions for LoRa: the total transmission time and signal strength, as well as the signal frequency, must comply with the laws of your country. As beacon signals, I transmitted RTC and GPS clock time data to Wisblock (as done in Meshtastic) Therefore, you can use the Meshtastic program and get the necessary functionality. But you can also download the Bernd Giesecke libraries
Wisblock API && Wisblock Sensors to enable support for the features you need. All data will be transmitted via Cayenne LPP, you can decode them yourself using another module.
To comply with LoRaWAN rules, you will need to translate the modules to P2P mode (using the AT command). I received all the data on a second module configured similarly to Wisblock and decoded it for transmission to the computer. I also expanded the functionality of LPP to transfer additional data to Wisblock modules. In particular, after receiving the packet, the module sent back SNR and RSSI data, as well as some other information (synchronized the reception and transmission time). This way I was able to automatically check and confirm transmission and reception.