Can two RN2483 (or RN2903) modems communicate point-to-point (P2P) without a gateway?

 
The RN2xx3 family of products are designed to support the LoRaWAN open standard as published by the LoRa Alliance. The LoRaWAN architecture dictates a hierarchical structure of gateways and network/application servers and has no concept of P2P communication. It is defined this way to support IoT applications where connection to the internet is fundamental, and it also offers the scalability to support the billions of IoT nodes predicted the next few years. 
 
A good analogy is walkie-talkies versus cell phones. Walkie-talkies have their uses, they are simple and can be very low cost, they serve a purpose ... but what do all of us have in our pockets today = cell phones. The scalability was fundamental to their dominant success and the same will be true for IoT. 
 
Microchip is a founder member of the LoRa Alliance and the LoRa product line is fundamentally aligned with LoRaWAN protocol. Although the underlying modem hardware would be capable of P2P links using LoRa modulation, and some users have had some success using 'radio' test modes to achieve that, Microchip are not promoting or supporting P2P. 

roundrocktom
UPDATE:  Delete this post as the modules can be used in Walkie-Talkie mode. Peer to Peer.  Didn't realize that

Yes you are right, but if your module is used in P2P mode, it is not a LoRaWAN device anymore (just talking LoRa with another device), and so it can not communicate with a gateway.

If one were to use two RN2483 devices to create a P2P link, it would use FSK modulation and not spread-spectrum?
 

manu harshan
i'm new with this RN2483 modem how could i get technical support from microchip?

Register and open a support ticket at:
http://microchip.com/support
 

I am using Lorawan library on RN2483 and trying to call lorawan_send inside the while loop after calling lorawan_mainloop (as suggested inside lorawan configuration guide). But, I can see just one message on Gateway (unpredictable) and can not send further messages. Did anyone used it and can see frequent messages for testing? If yes, what is the sequence of calls and data rate, duty cycle for EU868.

Hi,
There are people on internet that published some projects using RN2483 in P2P mode using LoRa modulation :
https://github.com/jpmeijers/RN2483-Arduino-p2p-examples/blob/master/Blinker/README.md
Regards

Chris A
I did have to update all modules to latest firmware before anything would talk!

I did not update until now, maybe that's the reason for the different behaviour.
After power on it says "chip version: RN2483 1.0.4 Oct 12 2017 14:59:25"
So I will do an update soon - can't be bad.
 
@ extronic: I'm just starting, having nearly no experience with such modules.
Currently I have just one RaspBerry Zero talking with one ATtiny817 using RN2483 modules point-to-point.

Instead this could be seen as an argument that reducing the UART transmission time between controller and module is not very important. It would be just kind of drop in the ocean.
 
Here's an overview of some times I observed in my current example, maybe it's of interest for someone.

I used default parameters (e.g. SF12). Ok, it takes a long time for a few bytes but the achieved distance is great.
Here is a table how parameters should affect on air time:
http://cpham.perso.univ-p...LORA/resources/toa.jpg
 
I will do those measurements because I'm also very interested in optimizing power requirements. But it may take a few weekends until I have the time.