Helium Router Updater

Automatically adds / removes euis / skfs from your helium routes based on updates from your LNS

Status

Beta
We use this internally and things may change (either on our side or on the helium side)

Purpose

Make it easy to integrate your own LNS into Helium

Requirements

your own Helium Oui
your own Helium DevAddr range
your own LNS (eg: Chirpstack) configured for helium:
- with your own DevAddr range
- allows connections from unknown gateways
- your gateway bridge should be publicly accessible
- should store appEui somewhere as this is required for helium ~~but not natively supported by chirpstack~~ this is possible as of chirpstack 4.4; it is called joinEui
a preconfigured route (see adding routes)
enough DC credit in your wallet to "buy" messages (you can use https://dc-portal.helium.com/ to buy DC credits and view the current DC credits of your oui)

Building

docker-compose run --entrypoint "" helium-route-updater ./build.sh

Standalone usage

Make sure the following environment variables are set (via in a .env file or via actual environment variables)

LNS_TYPE=chirpstack
LNS_API_AUTH=<tenantid>:<apikey>
LNS_API_ENDPOINT=<proto>://<chirpstack-server-hostname>
LNS_LISTEN=redis://<redis-server-hostname>:<port>/<dbnum>
LNS_AUTO_ROAMING=<boolean>
HELIUM_ROUTE_ID=<route uuid>
HELIUM_KEYPAIR=<hex encoded keypair or file containing the keypair (should start with ./ or /)>
HELIUM_SERVER=https://config.iot.mainnet.helium.io:6080

Run the ./bin/helium-route-updater command or run the thisisdeveloment/helium-route-updater docker container

The only odd one here is LNS_AUTO_ROAMING; it will update the region of the linked device profile of a device if it detects a different region in the JOIN_REQUEST/REJOIN_REQUEST. This one is not helium specific; but as helium is one of the few global LoRaWAN networks and it fits easily in the rest of the structure it is an optional feature here.

Caution: The LNS_AUTO_ROAMING feature currently assumes each device has it own device profile. If you have a setup were you share device profiles between multiple devices this wil break things!!

Chirpstack Docker Compose usage

Copy your delegate keypair to the same directory as your docker-compose.yml
Add the below services definition to your docker-compose.yml.
Fill in the missing <> environment variable values.
Run docker-compose down && docker-compose up -d

helium-route-updater:
    image: thisisdevelopment/helium-route-updater
    environment:
      - LNS_TYPE=chirpstack
      - LNS_API_AUTH=<chirpstack tenant id>:<chirpstack apikey>
      - LNS_API_ENDPOINT=http://chirpstack:8080
      - LNS_LISTEN=redis://redis:6379/0
      - LNS_AUTO_ROAMING=false
      - HELIUM_ROUTE_ID=<route uuid>
      - HELIUM_KEYPAIR=./delegate_keypair.bin
      - HELIUM_SERVER=https://config.iot.mainnet.helium.io:6080
    depends_on:
      - chirpstack
    volumes:
      - ./delegate_keypair.bin:/app/delegate_keypair.bin

Library usage

Please use the ssl/tls endpoint for production: https://config.iot.mainnet.helium.io:6080 See https://github.com/helium/oracles/issues/543

ch := make(chan listener.DeviceEvent)
keypair := helium_crypto.KeyPairFromString(config.Auth)
client := helium_api.NewClient(config.Server, keypair)
go updater.Run(client, config.RouteId, ch)

devEui, _ := strconv.ParseUint("<your device id>", 16, 64)
joinEui, _ := strconv.ParseUint("<your app eui>", 16, 64)
device = &types.Device{devEui: devEui, joinEui: joinEui}
ch <- types.DeviceEvent{
Update: []*types.Device{device},
Delete: []*types.Device{},
}

Adding routes

Step 1: build helium-config-service-cli

This is used to create a new route for your oui

git clone https://github.com/helium/helium-config-service-cli ./source
docker run -v $(pwd)/source:/app -w /app rust:1.70 bash -c "apt-get update && apt-get install -y protobuf-compiler && cargo install --path ."
sudo mv source/target/release/helium-config-service-cli ./
sudo chown $(id -u):$(id -g) ./helium-config-service-cli

Step 2: create route

For this you'll need the info from when you created your oui. Change your regions/ports where needed. For chirpstack you'll need a separate port per region.

export HELIUM_KEYPAIR_BIN=<path to your private (delegate) key file>
export HELIUM_NET_ID=<your netid>
export HELIUM_OUI=<your oui>
export HELIUM_MAX_COPIES=5
export SERVER_HOST=<your public LNS server hostname>
export SERVER_PORT=<your public LNS server port>
export DEVADDR_START=<start of your devaddr range>
export DEVADDR_END=<end of your devaddr range> 

rid=$(./helium-config-service-cli route new --commit  | head -n 1 | cut -f3 -d' ')
./helium-config-service-cli route update server -r $rid --host $SERVER_HOST --port $SERVER_PORT --commit
./helium-config-service-cli route update add-gwmp-region -r $rid eu868 $SERVER_PORT --commit
./helium-config-service-cli route devaddrs add --route-id $rid -s $DEVADDR_START -e $DEVADDR_END --commit

Contributing

You can help to improve this, check out how you can do things CONTRIBUTING.md

thisisdevelopment / helium-route-updater

readme