I would like to measure temperatures using a LoRa device and establish a point-to-point connection with another LoRa compatible device. However, the only appropriate temperature sensors use LoRaWAN, which requires a network server, which I am trying to avoid. Is there a way to enable a LoRaWAN sensor device to establish a point-to-point connection and receive packets that don't have to go through a network server?
Thanks in advance!
LoRaWAN is just a higher level protocol running on top of the base LoRa Radio encoding.
This means that without knowing a LOT more about the device in question it's impossible to answer this.
It will come down to what you can configure on the device, if it only exposes the high level details of LoRaWAN then you will probably be out of luck.
LoRa is the PHY layer that runs the LoRaWAN (network/datalink) layer functions.
One CAN use LoRa PHY alone to establish P2P links. But one MUST fix on frame structures, addressing etc.
Should be possible if you have access to the firmware itself! There are many open source projects e.g. with RFM69 moduls from hoperf, which are usefull to create your own propriatary communication between two clients.
But as hardllib mentioned, you give less information about the detailed setup and accesabilities you have.
If you don't have access to the firmware, there will be no regular mode for commercial LoRa devices to intercommunnicate with each other
There's an alternative, but it depends a lot on what the other "LoRa compatible device is".
If it has gateway functionalities (ability to listen on multiple channels and data rates and matching software, usually means SX13xx-based) and you can freely program it, then it may be possible to have the LNS directly embedded in the gateway. In that case you just continue to use full LoRaWAN.
Probably much easier if it's something running some Linux flavour (e.g. a Raspberry Pi of some sort) than a more basic device (e.g. ESP32 based), but it's really just software, so as long as it fits it should be possible.
Depending on your scenario, you probably don't need a full-fledged LNS, so you can probably just build a pretty basic thing with lots of stuff hardcoded if you need to run that on a more limited device.
If the other device is just an end-device (which can listen only on a single channel/data rate at a time, usually based on SX12xx chips), then you have the option to try to turn it into a "nano-gateway", and again, embed an LNS.
The LNS would need to be configured to change the channels sent to the sensor so it only uses the single channel your nano-gateway is listening on.
The join process is going to be clumsy as the sensor will send join requests on one of 3 standard channels at random, while the nano-gateway will only listen on a single channel, but once joined it should work.
Again, it would need the ability to run an LNS (at least a minimal one) on the nano-gateway, see above.
Otherwise, as the other have pointed out, if you really want to use raw LoRa and no LNS at all , then you will need to modify the existing device. Depending on the device, the MCU, whether the firmware source is publicly available, etc, this may be very easy or very complex. Without any details about that device, it's very difficult to say more.
