23romax / h2b

Helium hotspot bootstrapper

H2B - Helium Hotspot Bootstrapper bash script

What is H2B

H2B is a script that autoinstalls and autoconfigures a fully-functioning Helium DIY Hotspot on raspbian.

H2B was originally intended to speed up the setup process when having to prepare many DIY hotspots. A simple and straightforward automation of the installation process described at the Helium Developer Hotspot Setup.

Installation

Flash your Pi's SD Card with Raspbian Buster. On most linux distributions (such like raspbian) as root, run the following: Mind - Raspbian comes with unzip command, others might not!

using wget

wget https://github.com/23RoMax/h2b/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd h2b-master/
chmod +x ./install-hotspot.sh 
chmod +x ./build.sh
./install-hotspot.sh

OR

using curl

curl -LO https://github.com/23RoMax/h2b/archive/master.zip
unzip master.zip
cd h2b-master/
chmod +x ./install-hotspot.sh
chmod +x ./build.sh
./install-hotspot.sh

Just follow the installation procedure and have an eye out for potential error messages.

After your Pi has rebooted, reconnect via ssh pi@ipv4ofpi and run

cd h2b-master/
./build.sh

Congratulations, you have successfully done the base installation of your hotspot.

To run it, head back to your root folder cd ~ and issue

./lora_gateway/reset_lgw.sh start 17

To reset your concentrator via GPIO pin 17, followed by

$ cd ~/packet_forwarder/lora_pkt_fwd
./lora_pkt_fwd

This is extraordinarily well explained in the Helium Developer Documentation. If you want to connect your miner right away, follow the documentation.

Utilities

H2B comes with utilities and alternative configurations.

1. Systemd Service installation routine + the service itself
2. Startup bash script to use with the service
3. TCP Dump to debug
4. 868 MHz config json for the packet forwarder

How to autorun the hotspot after power outages and reboots

Navigate to the utilities folder of H2B cd utilities/ and run

chmod +x ./run.sh
chmod +x ./add-service.sh
cp ./run.sh ~/
./add-service.sh
systemctl status helium.service
sudo systemctl start helium.service

Your machine will now start the package forwarder on reboot automatically. Mind - do not remove run.sh from your users root folder

Compatibility

Tested in combination with:

LoraWAN Interfaces:

• Rakwireless RAK2245 PI HAT
• Rakwireless RAK831 concentrator Tested by TTeague

SBCs:

• Raspberry Pi 3B
• Raspberry Pi 4

Operating Systems:

• 2020-02-13-raspbian-buster-lite
• 2020-05-27 Raspberry Pi OS (32) Lite Mind: At the time of writing this is the latest armhf stable buster lite release

Open To-Do's

1. Adding the installation process of the service to the installation routine
2. Adding a selection process of the gateway configurations during installation routine - see TTN config files

Thank you

Travis - for your help in testing and spreading the word of this script