Private LoRaWAN Lake Monitoring

Setup: Fully self-hosted LoRaWAN telemetry system for a 1.1 ha lake. Sensors floating, data flowing, no cloud, no compromise.

Goals

• Measure water temperature and dissolved oxygen (DO)
• Send data via LoRaWAN (~200–300m range)
• Use my Multitech Conduit (MTCDT-LEU1) as the gateway (Local) 
• Run ChirpStack in Docker on a Mac mini (Local) 
• Visualize everything in Grafana on my FreeBSD server (Online)

Architecture

[LoRa Node 1]    [LoRa Node 2]
   (Temp)           (DO)
      \               /
     [LoRaWAN Gateway - MTCDT]
              |
        (Semtech UDP)
              |
      [Mac mini + ChirpStack]
              |
         (MQTT over LAN)
              |
     [FreeBSD + InfluxDB + Grafana]

Hardware

• Gateway: Multitech MTCDT-LEU1 – wired via LAN, LTE as fallback
• Sensors: 2× ELV Make-LW-Set-1 + DS18B20 (Temp) + DFRobot DO Sensor
• Power: 18650 Li-Ion + Solar (5V / TP4056)
• Deployment: Waterproof boxes, mounted on floating platform at lake

Backend Stack

• ChirpStack: Running in Docker on macOS (Mac mini)
• Docker Compose: includes Redis, PostgreSQL, Mosquitto
• Data Out: MQTT publishes to LAN (localhost:1883)

Visualization

• Node-RED or Python script subscribes to MQTT
• Writes parsed payload to InfluxDB
• Grafana dashboard for temperature & DO levels
• Optional: alert if DO < 5 mg/L

Security

• Mosquitto secured with username/password
• Only gateway IP allowed to hit UDP port 1700
• Web UI restricted to local net or VPN

Status

• [x] Gateway installed
• [x] ChirpStack up and running (Docker)
• [x] MQTT data flowing
• [ ] Sensor nodes deployed on lake
• [ ] Payload parsing + Influx writer script

Next Up

• Add pH & turbidity sensors
• LoRa downlink to control node sampling rates
• Battery level monitor
• Public display dashboard with read-only API

TBC