Common issues 4/5: choose the location method for LoRa devices

By design the LoRa network computes a geolocation based on position of the device relative to the near gateways. The accuracy of this location is thus dependent of the local network configuration and thus may vary. In some use cases you may prefer using the location directly provided by the device itself (GPS or any proprietary solution). Let’s see how.

First we have to consider the structure of a data message stored in Live Objects:

There is 3 important sections in the message:

• The metadata section who contains network information (rssi, snr, signal level etc)
• The location field: This is the this field who is used in Live Objects (for example in widgets) to locate the device
• The value who contain the data sent by the device, basically in LoRa, an hexadecimal payload

You can see in this example that the location is provided by the LoRa network (location.provider = lora). To use a custom location you need:

1/ to have this information available in the payload

2/ decode the payload thanks to the decoding service (see https://liveobjects.orange-business.com/doc/html/lo_manual_v2.html#DEC).

Beware when decoding: the location must respect the json format as follow “location”:{“lon”:2.295070,”lat”:48.798030}

If decoding has been made properly, the root location field is replaced by the custom value with provider “device”. Note that the network value will be still available in the metadata.network.lora.location section