Base station for Canique sensors

This base station is meant to be used with the extremly low-power and accurate Canique Climat temperature/humidity sensor. This radio hat can manage encrypted connections to up to 20 Canique sensors via 868MHz link. The radio hat's main task is to receive sensor messages from Canique sensors, decrypt and acknowledge those messages, and forward them to an MQTT server (configurable).

The radio hat supports time synchronization from Raspberry Pi to Radio Hat and vice versa. It can keep track of the time even if the Raspberry Pi is unpowered because it has a real-time clock onboard that is powered via a CR2032 cell. The radio hat will set the Raspberry Pi's time on boot, if the Raspberry Pi has no NTP synchronization enabled. If the time of the Pi is synchronized using NTP, though, the Pi will periodically transmit its time to the radio hat.

What makes this temperature/humidity measurement ecosystem better than the competition?

• You have full real-time access to the sensor data. The measurements are accessible via Python script e.g. or any other language that can connect to an MQTT server.
• There's no vendor lock-in. You can roll your own cloud or use the Canique Cloud for remote access. Building remote access is basically just creating an MQTT bridge to a remote MQTT server and building a website around the data.
• You have encryption + protection against replay attacks on the 868MHz channel.
• The code for the Canique Local Cockpit website is available under /var/www/ on your Raspberry Pi and you can change it to your needs.
• You can build automation based on temperature/humidity data or integrate the data with any system.
• You can setup up alarms (this is a Cloud function) to trigger e-mails on certain thresholds

Software support

The hat has an extensive software support package, you can find installation instructions on Github. Installation consists of executing a single install script, that's it. The script will install multiple debian packages. The software stack that is installed consists of:

• Nginx web server (needed to provide a locally running website displaying the sensor information)
• Mosquitto MQTT server (needed for live updates on the local and remote websites)
• InfluxDB database (needed to save a sensor history and display charts)
• Canique specific software to communicate with the Radio Hat

Everything is installed and configured automatically.

64-bit OS are currently not supported, you need a 32-bit Debian Bullseye based operating system. The firmware on the Radio Hat can be updated manually with signed+encrypted firmware released by Canique.com using a script - no specific hardware is needed for this purpose. The Canique-specific software packages can receive updates via a Canique Debian repository (that is automatically setup during installation).

Local and remote user interface for sensor data

The software stack provides you with a webserver on your Raspberry Pi. If you've finished the installation procedure, and visit the IP of your Raspberry Pi in a web browser, you'll see a very similar site to this one (5 Canique sensors are connected in the example): Note that this intranet site only works from your local network and is served from your Raspberry Pi. You can access the same data via cockpit.canique.com from anywhere in the world. But you don't have to. The sensor data upload to the Canique cloud service is optional - if you skip the step in the installation instructions, your data will stay local.

Contents

• a purple or red Canique Radio Hat (straight 2x20 pin header soldered) with CR2032 battery holder (battery not included) and u.FL connector onboard
• a u.FL to SMA adapter cable
• free access to the Canique Cloud (cockpit.canique.com)
• optional: an external 868MHz antenna with male SMA connector

Raspberry Pi is not included.