Using Class A for and Class C at the same time

#1

Does anyone know if its possible to use Class A and class C at the same time?
The sensors we have mrimarily use class A, connect to the network and send the sensor data to the gateway. I was wondering if its possible to also set them up to handle multicast broadcasts.

For instance if we wanted to change the cycle time on all the sensors we could multicast it rather than having to sent the config to each individual sensor.

#2

hi,

sorry, Class A and Class C don’t be used at the same time. Because the server and node must have the same mode.

for example, node is class A and the server is class C. The data of the node can be sent to the server. But the data from the server is completely unavailable when sent to the node. Because the server will treat the node as class C by default. The server will immediately send the data to the node after receiving the data from the node. However, the node is class A. After it sends the data to the gateway, its RX2 will turn on after a certain delay. Obviously, the node will miss the data coming from the server

#3

Thanks @jasonXu This installation is likley to be 800+ nodes and I thought this may have been an easy way to broadcast a change of timing to the all of the units rather than have to send the change to eacy unit.
Mind you automating this and injecting the messages in to MQTT tx should not be a huge issue either.

#4

Jason had talked about this topic with us this afternoon. If you just need to modify the parameters one time, the answer is YES.

  1. Config your node as class A and join;
  2. Switch working mode to Class C via AT command or code, and receive broadcast from server/gateway;
  3. Switch working mode back to Class A and let it working normally.

But if you need to fix the parameters frequency, the answer is NO, the main problem is your server-side. You can’t switch working mode in your server for each node.

#5

Thanks, In my case because the system only transmits the packets in class A once every hour or if there is an alert and wakes up to read the sensors once every 15 seconds I will see what the power consumption is going to be like for sticking the device in to ClassC quring each sensor read cycle and listen for broadcasts. It could indeed solve the problem.If i am not mistaken I should be able to put the unit in to Class C and use it for RX only during the sensor read cycles.