General LoRa detection support possible?

[serialrf433]

I found your project and i think it is a really interesting reuse of already existing hardware.
I often ask myself what LoRa networks are around. I would like to know if there are highly active The Things Network transmissions going on. I would like to know if there is still a Helium network around. I would like to know what other LoRa transmissions are send.

Would such a general LoRa detection functionality be possible with slight modification?

[mcortezv]

You could make that suggestion as an issue so that it can be implemented.

[serialrf433]

I would first like to explain more in detail to the developer why i have this intention to write about this. Not just for example write 3 lines of text describing something and after those 3 likes directly ask when it would be implemented.

For example i showing SDR data from Norway how crowded the ISM frequency is there because of all the smart meters using this frequency and meshtastic users have to squeeze in what is left would also be something interesting: https://devblog.yvn.no/posts/meshtastic-norway/

Having to know how many different smart meter transmissions are on air compared to the Meshtastic transmissions is something useful i think.

[parheliatech]

The HAL (hardware abstraction layer) code has the ability to extract IQ data directly from the receiver chip in order to see the spectrum, although it can't be done at the same time as the baseband decoding. I'm guessing the hardware capability exists more as a test mode but could be interesting to play with to see what utility could be realized from it. I live in a region in the US where MediumFast 18 works much better than the default, also spend time in two other locations with default network settings, and travel a lot. I'm also curious about using meshpoint as a detective but am still trying to understand the Rak correlator capabilities.

[KMX415]

@serialrf433 Thanks! Right now Meshpoint decodes Meshtastic and MeshCore. Adding TTN or Helium isn't trivial though, LoRaWAN is a completely different protocol with join procedures, network servers, app-layer encryption, etc. The concentrator hardware can hear any lora signal in the band, but going from raw packets to decoded data is another challenge.

Honestly not sure I'd go down that road since TTN and Helium already have their own tooling for monitoring coverage. But it's an interesting thought, if there's interest down the road maybe we can revisit it...

[serialrf433]

I know that it is a different protocol with join procedures, network servers, app-layer encryption, etc.
As far as i have understand in a discussion i had with a person, those packages differ. A TTN package looks different then for example a Helium package. It is not that much about real decoding. I am not even really talking about implementing it. Having statistics at anomalies is helping. For example When i know there are 5 Meshtastic users and one thing that looks like LoRaWAN that is sending a package once in an hour, i am still getting more information out of this then when i just know about those 5 Meshtastic users.

The information is out there. I would like to know that it is out there.