Wirepas Linux Gateway

Gateway overview
Option 1: native installation
Option 2: Docker installation
Contributing
License

Gateway overview

This repository contains Wirepas' reference gateway implementation, which relies on a set of services to exchange data from/to a Wirepas Mesh network from/to a MQTT broker or host device. The implemented API is described here.

The services will be known from now on as sink service and transport service. The sink service is responsible to interface locally with a Wirepas device running its Dual MCU API. The transport service packs network messages on protobuffers and publishes them on top of MQTT according to Wirepas Backend API.

Figure 1, provides an overview of the gateway implementation and the apis involved at each step.

Figure 1 - Gateway services overview.

Option 1: native installation

Requirements

The implementation is based on DBus. The C binding used to access DBus is sdbus from systemd library so even if systemd is not required to be running, the libsystemd must be available.

Systemd version must be higher or equal to 221. You can check it with:

systemd --version

In order to build the sink service or the transport python wheel that contains C extensions, systemd headers are needed

sudo apt install libsystemd-dev

Python 3 and a recent pip version (>= 18.1)

sudo apt install python3 python3-dev python3-gi
wget https://bootstrap.pypa.io/get-pip.py \
   && sudo python3 get-pip.py && rm get-pip.py \
   && sudo pip3 install --upgrade pip

Installation

The implementation uses system bus that has enforced security. In order to obtain a service name on system bus, the user launching the sink service must be previously declared to system. Provided file com.wirepas.sink.conf must be copied under /etc/dbus-1/system.d/ and edited with the user that will launch the sink_service (and transport service).

To change the default wirepas user, please edit the following lines from com.wirepas.sink.conf:

    <!-- Only wirepas user can own the service name -->
    <policy user="wirepas">

It is recommended to restart your gateway once this file is copied.

Sink service

You can either build yourself the sink service by foolowing instructions from sink_service folder or you can use prebuilt version available for each release on release section of this repository. Download the one for your architecture (Arm or Amd64)

Transport service

To build the wheel yourself, please refer to the transport's service readme file.

Alternatively, you can use prebuilt Python wheels. You can either get it through PyPi or from the release section of this repository.

The library contains a c extension which will be compiled upon installation (even with prebuilt wheel). Please ensure that you have met all the build requirements prior to attempting the installation.

If you get the wheel from release section of this repository:

    pip3 install wirepas_gateway-*.tar.gz

or from PyPi

    pip3 install wirepas_gateway

Configuration and starting services

Sink service configuration

A sink service must be started for each connected sink on Gateway:

    sink_service/build/sinkService -p <uart_port> -b <bitrate> -i <sink_id>

Parameters are:

uart_port: uart port path (default: /dev/ttyACM0)
bitrate: bitrate of sink uart (default: auto baudrate. 125000, 115200 and 1000000 bps are tested)
sink_id: value between 0 and 9 (default: 0).

If multiple sinks are present, they must have a different sink_id.

Transport service configuration

Parameters can be set from command line or from a setting file in YAML format. To get the full list of parameters, please run:

    wm-gw --help

From command line

Here is an example to start the transport module from the command line:

    wm-gw \
          --mqtt_hostname "<server>" \
          --mqtt_port <port> \
          --mqtt_username <user> \
          --mqtt_password <password> \
          [--mqtt_force_unsecure] \
          --gateway_id <gwid> \

where:

mqtt_hostname: Hostname or IP where the MQTT broker is located
mqtt_port: MQTT port
mqtt_username: MQTT user
mqtt_password: MQTT password
mqtt_force_unsecure: Toggle to disable TLS handshake. Necessary to establish connections to unsecure port (default: 1883).
gateway_id: The desired gateway id, instead of a random generated one

It must be unique for each gateway reporting to same broker

From configuration file

    wm-gw --settings=settings_files.yml

All parameters that are accepted by the transport service can be set through the settings file. An example of a settings_file.yml file is given below:

    #
    # MQTT brocker Settings
    #
    mqtt_hostname: <IP or hostname where the MQTT broker is located>
    mqtt_port: <MQTT port (default: 8883 (secure) or 1883 (local))>
    mqtt_username: <MQTT user>
    mqtt_password: <MQTT password>
    mqtt_force_unsecure: <true | false>

    #
    # Gateway settings
    #
    gateway_id: <The desired gateway id, must be unique for each gateway>
    gateway_model: <Custom gateway model, can be omitted>
    gateway_version: <Custom gateway version, can be omitted>

    #
    # Filtering Destination Endpoints
    #
    ignored_endpoints_filter: <Endpoints to filter out. Ex: [1, 2, 10-12]>
    whitened_endpoints_filter: <Endpoints to whiten. Ex: [1, 2, 10-12]>