BSides Leeds LoRa Badge Guide – Usage

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First get yourself a ESP32 LoRa board (details, including a link to get the next-day via Amazon Prime can be found <link to SBG Engineering Blog for page for Quick Start Guide>) and pop along the the SBG Flashing Station to get BSides Leeds 2019 custom Challenge firmware on it.

Receiver Only

To receive broadcast messages (both from BSidesLeeds and other attendees) just apply power to the USB connector and watch the messages appear on the mini OLED screen.

Transmitter & Receiver

Connect the USB port to some kind or serial terminal. The guide assumes they’ll be some kind of Windows, Mac or Linux host, but we’re sure other people will be more creative.

Connecting

Start by lugging the board into your computer then :-

Windows

Install USB UART driver from https://www.silabs.com/products/development-tools/software/usb-to-uart-bridge-vcp-drivers and check you have a new port in device manager when the board is plugged in (normally COM3)

Next install PuTTY, from https://www.chiark.greenend.org.uk/~sgtatham/putty/latest.html and configure as follows (Connection Type: Serial, Serial Line: <from above, normally COM3>, Speed 115200)

Hit open and you should get something like the screen below

OSX & Linux

Doing screen /dev/ttyUSB0 115200 in a shell should give you something line the screen below

Usage

LoRa is a low-power, low-bitrate but very long range radio protocol suitable for sending small amounts of data a long way.

Your badge is a LoRa based chat system. Choose a Nick then type away. Message received will be shown on the OLED screen on the badge.

Look out for special BROADCAST announcements during the day.

Beyond simple chat

The firmware source is available from https://github.com/unprovable/BSidesLeeds2019 . Feel free to take it and modify it.

Glenn Pegden