The LoRa modules came in. 1 x Reyax RYLR896 Module, 1 x Ronoth LoStik USB LoRa stick. I realized that I didn’t have any TTL level serial devices near at hand to talk to the RYRL896, so then I ordered 2 x Covvy CP2102 USB to 3.3V/5V TTL Serial devices.
There are some Python code examples available for the LoStik on github, so I snagged them and gave them a run. The easiest one is to toggle the on-board LEDs, and that worked fine, but the transmit/receive didn’t do much of course, because I don’t yet have anything set up to transmit/receive with! Sigh.
I did set up a Raspberry Pi 3+ to talk to the LoStik though – with WiFi access, VNC desktop, and full Python implementation.
Once the CP2102s arrived, I wired one up with the RYLR896, plugged it in, found out that it enumerated as /dev/ttyUSB0 on my system, and fired up minicom with the default settings of 115200 bps, 8/N/1. Sure enough, I could get a response from the RYLR896, but it constantly said “+ERR=1” with every character. I’m pretty sure that it timed out between characters. Try as I might, I couldn’t get minicom to batch up the characters and only send when I hit <RETURN>. Well, that and it was confusing on how to get <CR><LF> at the end of the line… let’s see… stty cooked </dev/ttyUSB0… what else??? Argh.
So I installed and tried puTTY. It’s in the repos, apparently! Wow. Same thing, argh.
Then I tripped over this Youtube video showing use of the RYLR896, and it showed a terminal emulator called CoolTerm, available for LINUX, Mac and MS-Windows. Sure enough, it’s the real deal, with a GUI, and the right options to allow “Line Mode”, Local Echo, and CR+LF on <ENTER>. It worked!
The RYLR896 “AT” commands are case sensitive.
Now, to see if I can get the LoStik to talk to the RYLR896…
I’ve ordered a second LoStik and a SX12621 LoRa HAT for the Raspberry Pi.