/gateway-rs

The Helium Light Gateway

Primary LanguageRustApache License 2.0Apache-2.0

helium-gateway

ci

helium-gateway is a gateway service between a linux based LoRa gateways using the a GWMP1/2 based packet forwarder, and the Helium router.

The current gateway project forwards packets to the router but does not yet use state channels which means forwarded packets are not yet rewarded by the blockchain.

The project builds ipk packaged releases for linux based LoRa gateways. These packages attempt to be self-updating to be able to track improvements to the service. Updates are delivered through the following channels which a gateway can subscribe to by a channel setting in the update section of the settings file:

  • alpha - Early development releases. These will happen frequently as functionality is developed and may be unstable. Expect to need to log into your gateway to restart or manually fix your light gateway.
  • beta - Pre-release candidates which are considered to be stable enough for early access. Breaking issues can still happen but should be rare.
  • release - The main (and default) release channel. Updates are considered to be stable for all platforms.

NOTE: Gateways should have at least 16Mb of available application file space to handle gateway installation and updates.

Installing

If your supported LoRa gateway did not come with helium-gateway pre-installed, manual installation requires you to:

  1. Configure the packet forwarder on the gateway to forward to the helium-gateway application. This varies per gateway but the goal is to set the packet forwarder to forward to the (default) configured helium-gateway on 127.0.0.1 at udp port 1680
  2. Set up ssh acccess to the gateway. Depending on the gateway that may require going through a web interface, while others already have ssh configured.
  3. scp a downloaded ipk release package for the supported platform to the gateway. e.g. 
    scp helium-gateway-<version>-<platform>.ipk <gateway>:/tmp/</code>
  4. ssh into the device and install the service using a command like: 
    opkg install /tmp/helium-gateway-<version>-<platform>.ipk

If this command succeeds the logs on the gateway will show the service starting and the local packet forwarder client connecting to the gateway service.

Supported Platforms

The following platforms have already been tested by Helium and our community. Our plan is to test this on all relevant hardware platforms used by the Helium Network. If your preferred platform isn't listed yet, here's how to get it added.

  • Review the open issues to see if it's already in progress. If not, file an issue.
  • Join the #gateway-dev channel on Helium Discord and let us know what platform we're missing.

Note that platforms will be tested much faster if you join the development process!

Platform Target Products
ramips_24kec mipsel-unknown-linux-musl ✅ RAK833 EVB Kit
✅ RAK7258 (WisGate Edge Lite)
❔ RAK7249 (WisGate Edge Max)
❔ RAK7240 (WisGate Edge Prime)
klkgw armv7-unknown-linux-musleabih ✅ Kerlink Wirnet iFemtoCell Evolution
dragino mips-unknown-linux-musl ✅ Dragino LPS8
❔ Dragino DLOS8
mtcdt armv5te-unknown-linux-musleabi ✅ Multitech Conduit MTCDT (mLinux)

Building

Use one of the existing releases if you can, or build your own by hand using the instructions below.

If you want to support a new platform, please consider submitting a PR to get the package as part of the supported matrix of gateway platforms!

  1. Install rust 
    curl --proto '=https' --tlsv1.2 -sSf https://sh.rustup.rs | sh
  2. Install cargo cross and cargo-make. The cross command allows for cross compiling to hardware targets using docker images, while the cargo-make command is used to package up 
    cargo install cross
cargo install cargo-make
  3. Build the application or package using one of the following:

    1. Build the application binary using the target triplet from the supported targets. Note the use of the --release flag to optimize the target binary for size. Debug builds may be too large to run on some targets.

      cross build --target <target> --release

      The resulting application binary is located in

      target/<target>/release/helium_gateway

    2. Build an application ipk package using one of the target system profile names

      cargo make --profile <platform> ipk

      The resulting ipk will be located in

      target/ipk/helium-gateway-<version>-<platform>.ipk