Hi I was wondering if anyone has experience with the RAK 831 gateway. Additionally I would be interested if anyone is using one in Australia with the TTN?
Last evening I was able to get the RAK 831 gateway up and running with a new Raspberry Pi and fresh Raspbian Stretch lite image within one hour. I’ve used the following tutorial as a start https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/labs/story/rak831-lora-gateway-from-package-to-online
Only additional step I had to do to get everything working was resetting the RAK 831 module. See page 12 of the manual provided by RAK Wireless
I have one connected in Perth. The range is very ordinary, but it suits my needs to test LoRaWAN products myself. As the range is not great, it does not provide the local community with a great access to a LoRa gateway. I am not sure what your objective of a gateway is.
I really don’t have the technical background to deal with the RAK products (I also have a couple of RAK811) and have not been greatly impressed with their tech support (compared with Pycom).
To be honest, if i had my time again, I would just have bought a simple plug and play (Match X or similar). Although they cost more I must have burned hours trying to deal with initial problems.
Just read the length of the posts on this forum dealing with RAK831 and RAK811 products and you will get a feel for it.
Another thing to bear in mind is that RAK831 is not likely to survive outside in Australian summers for long. Mine sits in a large IP67 enclosure (with modifications to allow better air flow) and is attached to a domestic roof structure. It runs very hot on summer days!
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great value for money and excellent TTN community support.
not a product for non techies.
I have a RAK 831 gateway finally running (indoors) in North Sydney. I cannot comment yet on the range, but in due course, I intend to move it outside, give it a decent antenna, solar power it and use a Vodafone 3G backhaul. So far, my experience has been mediocre, but much of that has been due to my learning curve. Presently struggling to get the TTN map to locate my gateway based on GPS, but once that is resolved I think it will be a cost effective gateway. I chose this because I have notions of running other tasks on the same Pi.
I will monitor the CPU temperature on the Pi, and probably the enclosure ambient temperature when it goes live.
I’ve an 831 at home, 70km’s+ with VERY limited line of sight on two back to back SF12 hits, generally in my local built up area I’m getting about 4-5km’s at SF7 with good reliability. Using the RAK fibre antenna that you often find the 831 bundled with. Seems as good as my old 880A setups.
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My range was so poor with the RAK (always around 1km in a suburban environment) that I eventually gave up and moved to a Laird gateway which has a far better reach.
Beware of using a cellular backhaul, make sure the access into your pi is watertight. You can lose a huge amount of money very quickly if this is compromised!
I think a point to note, after installation, is to change the restart pin number in
/opt/ttn-gateway/bin/start.sh
SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN=17
for RAK831 gateway, as the design of the hardware uses a different reset pin from the software that was originally written for ic880a-gateway.
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There must be something wrong with your RAK, I have a 97 KM unplanned chirp of my 4 dB antenna!
I have managed to get one running in Victoria but have only used it to receive from a few meters away so far. The new software with a setup menu interface was a huge help, so I suggest you try using that if you were using an older version.
(AU666-01)