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chirpstack/chirpstack-gateway-bridge
ChirpStack Gateway Bridge abstracts Packet Forwarder protocols into Protobuf or JSON over MQTT.
ChirpStack Gateway Bridge is a translation layer that sits on or near a LoRaWAN gateway and converts raw Packet Forwarder protocols (Semtech UDP, Basic Station) into a normalized Protobuf/JSON format over MQTT. It's part of the broader ChirpStack LoRaWAN stack and is the piece that lets you plug almost any gateway hardware into that ecosystem. If you're not doing LoRaWAN, there's nothing here for you.
The protocol abstraction is genuinely useful — Semtech UDP and Basic Station have meaningfully different wire formats, and having one normalized output simplifies everything downstream. The vendor packaging directory is a real differentiator: pre-packaged configs and init scripts for Cisco, Dragino, Kerlink, Multitech, and Tektelic gateways means you're not starting from scratch on embedded targets with constrained build environments. Test coverage across the struct-level packet parsing (both backends have their own test suites) catches the bit-level edge cases that bite you in RF protocols. The three MQTT auth targets — generic, GCP Cloud IoT Core, Azure IoT Hub — cover the realistic deployment patterns without overengineering.
The README itself flags that this component is no longer the preferred path — the ChirpStack MQTT Forwarder is recommended for new gateway installs, which makes this feel like maintained legacy rather than active development. GCP Cloud IoT Core was shut down in August 2023, so that integration is dead code that never got cleaned up. With 443 stars and 286 forks the community exists, but the star count suggests it's used rather than followed — don't expect quick responses on issues. The documentation entirely defers to chirpstack.io, so if that site goes down or changes structure, the README gives you nothing to work from.