Hi. I want to build a Raspberry Pi based gateway and I’ve been looking for an iMST iC880a.
However I’m struggling to find one.
I’m in the UK, but I also have a postal address in Spain if it’s necessary to be in the EU.
Does anyone know where I could get an iC880a board or can suggest an alternative part that for which build instructions are available and which performs well?
thanks
Could I do it with a Waveshare SX1302 pi hat. They seem easily available.
The iC880a was one of the earliest and original Conc Cards in the market (SX1301 based), not sure if IMST have made sold any for years… it some 9/10 years old now. You may occasionally see them or the iMST LoRaWAN GW Lite that used it sold second hand - I keep min running as a reliable GW workhorse of known perfromance. There are now many other options available - some still SX1301 (or derivative SX1308 based) but increasingly either SX1302 or 1303 based, all should be good to go if they have readily accessible manufacturers instructions or support on the (e.g. TTN Forum) Internet - search before you buy 
Currently builds some 30-50 for TTN Community use based on SX1302 implementations myself and its quite straight forward…(where are you in UK? - may be a local Community group can help)
Actually ignore question - I just remembered you were doing a (quite local) Solar build! Meant to follow up on that thread as where you are falls under one I initiated back in Jan (Uxbridge) where I have a few GW’s deployed. Will p.m. you later when not caught up in family/bank holiday stuff! May have (low power) solution for you…
Thanks Jeff-UK.
I have figured out how to get power up there (and probably a Cat-5 LAN cable as well) so I’m probably going to go that way.
I would like it to be as open source as possible.
The Waveshare seems easily available on Amazon UK. The only complaint is that it doesn’t like Debian Bookworm but I’m okay with Bullseye.
Another option is RAK5146 PiHAT
The attack surface footprint of a gateway is pretty minimal so I really wouldn’t be too concerned as long as it is a version under LTS support.