Building my own RAK831 based gateway

Gateways
1

Hi all,

I am new to the forum. I am from Bristol, UK. Sadly but not so many gateways are running around here.

Recently started working on my own LoraWAN gateway and thought that somebody might be interested in what I have done. My idea is to build a 4G connected gateway that is battery powered and possibly being charged from the solar panel. I know that there were couple of discussions about such an idea, but I newer seen anyone implementing actual device.
From my measurements I come to conclusion that power requirements would be:
Concentrator: 1.5 - 2W
Host: aprox 1W.
4G modem: aprox 1W, but there is wide range of modules with various power requirements.
Total is about 4W and I think it is feasible to run it from battery.

Progress so far:
Hardware wise I am using RAK831 board and custom breakout board for the Variscite imx6ull SOM module. At the moment it is using WiFi to access internet and it is powered from the power bank.

Software wise I have started writing custom packet forwarder software that is sending packets to the TTN using Semtech protocol. At the moment I am able to send packets to the server and have implemented very basic functionality for the downstream packets.

Plan is to make something that is working till end of the year.

IMG_20190106_175738 IMG_20190106_194344 IMG_20190106_194401

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2

interesting alternative for the RPI, have a look at the rak833 too… together they can form a very small gateway.
what is the advantage if you compare this SoM to let’s say an RPI zero ?

3

Without the battery the dimensions of the PCB assembly is 50 x 80 mm which I think is quite small. With RAK833 I could possibly make it even smaller, but I have got RAK831 a while ago and then 833 was not available. Now I do not want to start over again with different module.

Advantage of the Variscite module is that it is professional grade module, it has lot of options available - NAND, EMMC, size or RAM, with and without WiFi/Bluetooth, temperature range etc. Soon they promise to release pin compatible imx6ulz based SOM. Plus other benefits. Also I use imx6 based modules at work and I know platform very well so I can very quickly put together custom Yocto image etc.

Not sure what is power consumption of the Rpi Zero, but I bet it is higher than imx6ull. Downside is that price is quite high compared to Rpi.

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