The ESP32 Oled Lora TTGO LoRa32 board and connecting it to TTN

The TTGO LoRa32 board is an ESP32 based board that has both an Oled and a Lora transceiver, in my case, the SX1276 transceiver for the 868Mhz band. So it is very similar to some of the ESP32 Oled boards available on the Internet. The board looks like this:

And the interesting part of this board is the new Wifi antenna located in the back that is made of bend metal:

The board also has a LiPo connector and a charger circuit, but I haven’t these yet. It also has a user controlled blue led and a very dim red power led. This power led is so dim that at first I thought the board was broken/short circuited, but it is normal.
The Lora Antenna is connected by U.FL/IPEX connector. Both a U.FL to SMA adapter cable is provided and also a cable to connect to the LiPo connector.

An important information to use this board for the LMIC LoraWan based communication is the location of the Lora transceiver DI01 and DIO2 pins. Fortunately they are exposed and connected internally to the ESP32 processor GPIO33 and GPIO32 pins respectively. I’ve updated the pin out for this board:

EDIT: Thanks to Andreas on the comment section to point out that this image, while is correct for my board version (with the “3D” metal antenna under the board), the pin labels ARE WRONG. So much for copy it from the seller page.

The (so far yet…) pins mapping are on the bellow image. I’ve checked with my physical board and it seems right now.

I hope this corrects definitely the issue.

So back to basics, the LMIC definition pins for using this board are:

const lmic_pinmap lmic_pins = {
    .nss = 18,
    .rxtx = LMIC_UNUSED_PIN,
    .rst = 14,
    .dio = {26, 33, 32}  // Pins for the Heltec ESP32 Lora board/ TTGO Lora32 with 3D metal antenna
};

The Blue Led Pin is at Pin 2, and according to the sample code the Oled Display is at I2C address 0x3C. The I2C bus where the OLed is at SDA pin 4 and SCLK pin 15.

Also it seems there are at least two revisions for the ESP32 silicon, Revision 0 (Zero) for the initial one, and the latest, at the current date, Revision one.

By executing the Andreas Spiess revision check code it seems that my board is using the latest revision:

REG_READ(EFUSE_BLK0_RDATA3_REG) 1000000000000000
EFUSE_RD_CHIP_VER_RESERVE_S 1100
EFUSE_RD_CHIP_VER_RESERVE_V 111

Chip Revision (official version): 1
Chip Revision from shift Operation 1

Programming the board:
The board can be programmed easily with Platformio IDE by selecting as the target board the Heltec Wifi Lora board. Probably both boards are identical.

The platformio.ini file is as follows:

[env:heltec_wifi_lora_32]
platform = espressif32
board = heltec_wifi_lora_32
framework = arduino

For supporting the OLed and the Lora transceiver we also need to install the ESP8266_SSD1306 lib (ID: 562) and the IBM LMIC library (ID: 852) by either manually installing them on the project root or by adding the following line to the platformio.ini file:

[env:heltec_wifi_lora_32]
platform = espressif32
board = heltec_wifi_lora_32
framework = arduino
lib_deps= 852, 562

With this, the sample TTN INO sketchs for connecting either through ABP or OTAA work flawlessly without any issue by using the above LMIC pins configuration.

The sample sketch for the board: Connecting to TTN and display the packet RSSI:
Since we have the OLed, we can use the RX window to display the received RSSI of our messages on the gateway. This only works if the downlink messages from the gateway can reach back our node, so it might not work always. In my case, I’m about 3Km from the gateway in dense urban area, and not always I can display the packet RSSI.

How this works? Simple, just send our packet, and on the backend we send back the received RSSI as downlink message by using Node-Red, the TTN nodes, and some code:

Since our packet can be received by several gateways, we iterate over the TTN message and calculate the better RSSI and SNR:

// Build an object that allows us to track
// node data better than just having the payload

//For the debug inject node. Comment out when in real use
//var inmsg = msg.payload;
var inmsg = msg;  // from the TTN node

var newmsg = {};
var devicedata = {};
var betterRSSI = -1000;  // Start with a low impossible value
var betterSNR = -1000;

// WARNING only works with String data
// Use TTN decode functions is a better idea
var nodercvdata = inmsg.payload.toString("utf-8");

devicedata.device = inmsg.dev_id;
devicedata.deviceserial = inmsg.hardware_serial;
devicedata.rcvtime = inmsg.metadata.time;
devicedata.nodedata = nodercvdata;

// Iterate over the gateway data to get the best RSSI and SNR data
var gws = inmsg.metadata.gateways;

for ( var i = 0 ; i  betterRSSI )
        betterRSSI = gw.rssi;
        
    if ( gw.snr > betterSNR )
        betterSNR = gw.snr;
}

devicedata.rssi = betterRSSI;
devicedata.snr = betterSNR;

newmsg.payload = devicedata;

return newmsg;

We build then the response object and send it back to the TTN servers that send it to our node. The received data is then displayed on the Oled.

The Node-Red code is as follows:

[{"id":"d4536a72.6e6d7","type":"ttn message","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"TTN APP Uplink","app":"b59d5696.cde318","dev_id":"","field":"","x":140,"y":220,"wires":[["facbde95.14894"]]},{"id":"facbde95.14894","type":"function","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"Calculate better RSSI","func":"// Build an object that allows us to track\n// node data better than just having the payload\n\n//For the debug inject node. Comment out when in real use\n//var inmsg = msg.payload;\nvar inmsg = msg;  // from the TTN node\n\nvar newmsg = {};\nvar devicedata = {};\nvar betterRSSI = -1000;  // Start with a low impossible value\nvar betterSNR = -1000;\n\n// WARNING only works with String data\n// Use TTN decode functions is a better idea\nvar nodercvdata = inmsg.payload.toString(\"utf-8\");\n\ndevicedata.device = inmsg.dev_id;\ndevicedata.deviceserial = inmsg.hardware_serial;\ndevicedata.rcvtime = inmsg.metadata.time;\ndevicedata.nodedata = nodercvdata;\n\n// Iterate over the gateway data to get the best RSSI and SNR data\nvar gws = inmsg.metadata.gateways;\n\nfor ( var i = 0 ; i  betterRSSI )\n        betterRSSI = gw.rssi;\n        \n    if ( gw.snr > betterSNR )\n        betterSNR = gw.snr;\n}\n\ndevicedata.rssi = betterRSSI;\ndevicedata.snr = betterSNR;\n\nnewmsg.payload = devicedata;\n\nreturn newmsg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":400,"y":220,"wires":[["1ac970ec.4cfabf","94515e56.904228"]]},{"id":"1ac970ec.4cfabf","type":"debug","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"","active":false,"console":"false","complete":"payload","x":670,"y":260,"wires":[]},{"id":"2bea15d8.18f88a","type":"ttn send","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"TTN APP Downlink","app":"b59d5696.cde318","dev_id":"","port":"","x":970,"y":100,"wires":[]},{"id":"94515e56.904228","type":"function","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"set Payload","func":"msg.dev_id  = msg.payload.device;\nmsg.payload = Buffer.from(\"RSSI: \" + msg.payload.rssi);\n\nreturn msg;","outputs":1,"noerr":0,"x":670,"y":100,"wires":[["2bea15d8.18f88a","cd04abb9.ccd278"]]},{"id":"cd04abb9.ccd278","type":"debug","z":"66b897a.7ab5c68","name":"","active":true,"console":"false","complete":"true","x":930,"y":200,"wires":[]},{"id":"b59d5696.cde318","type":"ttn app","z":"","appId":"TTNAPPLICATIONID","region":"eu","accessKey":"ttn-account-v2.CHANGEMECHANGEME"}]

Just make sure that we have the TTN nodes installed, and change the credentials for your TTN Application.

On the TTGO ESP32 Lora32 board we just modify the event handling code to display the downlink message:

void onEvent (ev_t ev) {
    if (ev == EV_TXCOMPLETE) {
        display.clear();
        display.drawString (0, 0, "EV_TXCOMPLETE event!");


        Serial.println(F("EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)"));
        if (LMIC.txrxFlags & TXRX_ACK) {
          Serial.println(F("Received ack"));
          display.drawString (0, 20, "Received ACK.");
        }

        if (LMIC.dataLen) {
          int i = 0;
          // data received in rx slot after tx
          Serial.print(F("Data Received: "));
          Serial.write(LMIC.frame+LMIC.dataBeg, LMIC.dataLen);
          Serial.println();

          display.drawString (0, 20, "Received DATA.");
          for ( i = 0 ; i < LMIC.dataLen ; i++ )
            TTN_response[i] = LMIC.frame[LMIC.dataBeg+i];
          TTN_response[i] = 0;
          display.drawString (0, 32, String(TTN_response));
        }

        // Schedule next transmission
        os_setTimedCallback(&sendjob, os_getTime()+sec2osticks(TX_INTERVAL), do_send);
        digitalWrite(LEDPIN, LOW);
        display.drawString (0, 50, String (counter));
        display.display ();
    }
}

For example we can now see on the serial port monitor:

EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Sending uplink packet...
EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Sending uplink packet...
EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Sending uplink packet...
EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Data Received: RSSI: -118
Sending uplink packet...
EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Data Received: RSSI: -114
Sending uplink packet...
EV_TXCOMPLETE (includes waiting for RX windows)
Data Received: RSSI: -105

Thats it!

Some final notes:
Probably not related to the board, but when connecting it to an USB3 port, the Linux Operating system was unable to configure a device for the board. Connecting it to an USB2 port worked flawlessly:

usb 2-1: new full-speed USB device number 2 using xhci_hcd
usb 2-1: string descriptor 0 read error: -71
usb 2-1: can't set config #1, error -71      

As additional information the serial chip on this board is an umarked CP210x chip:

usb 4-1.3: new full-speed USB device number 6 using ehci-pci
cp210x 4-1.3:1.0: cp210x converter detected
usb 4-1.3: cp210x converter now attached to ttyUSB0

lsusb:

Bus 004 Device 006: ID 10c4:ea60 Cygnal Integrated Products, Inc. CP2102/CP2109 UART Bridge Controller [CP210x family]

I haven’t yet tried the WiFi and checked if the metal antenna is any good, but with my preliminary tests, it seems it’s not very good.

Sample code:

Sample code for the board is on this github link: https://github.com/fcgdam/TTGO_LoRa32