Last Saturday I was happy to join the gateway workshop organized by the TTN Community Hennef and Bonn. 13 persons joined the workshop and 6 gateways have been completed more or less.
The workshop was instructed by Frank Beks based on his tutorial located at Github.
The hardware:
IMST iC880A-SPI - LoRaWAN Concentrator 868MHz
RaspberryPi 3 Model B
PCB by Charles Hallard - Reference: PCB
Soldering the PCB was actually easy but the worst case happened unexpected - so be careful soldering the connector for the RaspberryPi which has to be soldered ON THE BACKSIDE of the PCB.
Installing the software was really easy and is different to the former workshops. The RaspberryPi is running Resin OS and you have to install a docker container with the packet forwarder. After that you can manage the gateway from console on the Resin.io webpage.
The TTN Hennef Community is also a very active "Freifunk" Community and so we spent the lunch break at the wonderful village Blankenberg where the Freifunk Community installed radio-link-systems and a wifi router on the old tower. Try to find the wifi router !!
Finally my gateway was working and back at home the first range tests showed unexpected good results because the gateway is still indoor (without housing) and not on the roof of the building where it finally should be.
Find some impressions of the workshop: https://goo.gl/photos/16i9Bqgt3UwSz3XG7
