RAK3172 P2MP question

LPWAN Modules / EVBs
1

Hello all…
New to here.

I have two questions:

  1. Has anyone attempted to send RUI3 AT commands to the RAK3172 (STM32WLE5) internal radio SPI bus with an onboard application rather than across the external UART link? Is this even possible?? Seems silly to have to connect up another processor to communicate with the STM32WL, as the STM32 is large enough to hold all application code.

  2. Has anyone attempted point to point communication using LoRa (for instance a long distance RF remote that can communicate to 5-10 nodes on a single network)?

Thank you

2

Welcome to the forum @ridgerunnersjw

(1) Not sure if I understand your question. But you cannot use AT commands to send something directly to the internal LoRa transceiver.

You can write custom applications with our RUI3 API ==> RAK RUI3 Documentation or communicate from a host MCU over serial with AT commands.

(2) Yes, the RAK3172 supports LoRa P2P. You can find the AT commands and the API calls for it in above given link.

3

Thank you @beegee …
with respect to (1) above:

I would like to use the AT commands that are provided but not at the expense of tying up a UART port on the device. It seems logical that the AT commands that RUI3 sends to the device get received within the UART and then sent over an internal bus to the radio. I would like to just be able to summon what AT commands I want within my application and send them to the internal radio on the STM32 rather than having them come in externally…Make sense??

Thanks

4

That makes no sense. The internal radio is not working on the base of AT commands. It is controlled through an internal SPI from the MCU to the transceiver with commands and register settings.

5

Of course I already know that an internal SPI transfers the commands sent over UART to the radio…I would like to hardcode in firmware the AT commands as I see fit and feed them to the RUI3 firmware which then sends these to the radio…

I don’t want to have an external connection to another processor over UART. It makes absolutely no sense to me to build up a very small radio / sensor and have TWO controllers on the PCB, one for the application and one for just communication to a radio…Especially when the radio processor is an ARM32 that is quite capable of holding ALL the application code.

6

Seems I misunderstood your question.

To use the RAK3172 without external MCU, you can write your application with the RUI3 framework in ArduinoIDE or Visual Studio Code.

Documentation and installation instructions are in our documentation center for RUI3

You will have to use the API calls. You cannot directly send AT commands to itself.
Examples are in the RUI3 BSP