Looking at what I can find, all the gateway vendors, except for the bigger outdoor gateways seem to be in Europe
Any commercial USA based low cost gateway vendors - at this point not for my employer - I want to buy one to put up at home (heck, I guess I can go a concentrator or RPi, but even the linked concentrator vendors are Europe)
Want to give back for everyone’s help - just put it up and go
This was already covered in your existing thread, and many others here besides. It’s not a matter of where something is manufactured, but that a configuration is offered which supports the 915 frequency band you need.
Except I do not like buying from overseas
I’ll stop buying American iPhones made in China with memory made in South Korea …
Move on, there are thousands of us on this forum that purchase items from around the globe without any bother at all.
I have both a RAK7246 as a standard TTN gateway and a RAK7244 - you can buy directly from them, it’s well packaged and sent by a global branded courier. I’ve spent $thousands with them. There are many other “non-corporate pricing” manufacturers available, but few that have a direct sales outlet in the US so it’s Aliexpress, BangGood etc.
Whatever happens, DO NOT buy anything less than an 8 channel gateway, the so called single or dual channel gateways are not LoRaWAN compliant and we do not support them here. Literally. We just say no.
US Disties inc. Arrow, Avnet, Digi-Key, Mouser, Newark, et al will take care of the ‘overseas’ buying pain for you but may not carry some of the more interesting/hands on units often favoured by the TTN Forumites.
I use them for off the shlf systems as well as sourcing (Direct or though AliExpress etc. as Nick mentions) some of the Chinese/Taiwanese or indeed European sources solutions… or simply buying concentrator cards and Pi bits to build my own…
I’d just add that I spend $thousands on small batches (~100) of parts that the EU distributors want me to buy a reel of (~3,000) as well as many random bits, cute gadgets and sensors from Aliexpress.
You may end up waiting a few weeks, but the pricing can’t be touched. I think about 1 parcel in 100 is either wrong or never shows up, so I spread the purchases over a number of vendors, but most of the time I get a refund anyway.
The intermediate place is to buy the same thing from China but on eBay using PayPal - the eBay feedback system & PayPal protection tends to sharpen their concentration - not quite the same good value, but close enough, and it often arrives in a couple of weeks rather than 6 or so.
Hi @KG2V, how very wise of you. The 96% of the world’s population who are not citizens of the United States of America are all thieves and fraudsters just waiting for the opening that allows them to pounce on honest Americans. Please immediately get rid of all of your clothes and electronics as these all present a clear and present danger to 'mericans. Beer and guns remain safe to use at this time.
You missed “Vendor” - I don’t care where the gateway is MADE, I don’t like ORDERERING from overseas, as I have experienced too many SHIPPING issues (this is for my personal one - the company can do what it wants)
By shipping issues, I include TIME.
Lots of folks will say to me (again, this is personal, not corporate) “Oh, order X direct from XXX and you can pay 10-20% less for YYY product”, and send me a link. I’ve tried it. 99% of the time, it goes well, but 1% there is an issue. It is easier to deal with a local vendor
So say there is a gateway made in the EU (or China, or where ever) and costs 70 UKP- Great! That’s currently approx $90 USD (just for easy math)
I’ll gladly buy said gateway for $110 USD from a US based distributer! No difference in product. I don’t like dealing with international shipping, worrying about potential customs issues (yes, some of this comes from US customs hanging a product up one time ), too may times of “we shipped it, and it is in transit” with poor tracking.
Will I buy from an overseas vendor? If I HAVE to, but if there is a vendor selling the exact same product (still made where ever) here, I prefer to buy here
So I’m drawing a distinction between manufacturer and vendor (or if you prefer distributor)
as I said in another reply, for the company stuff, I let the powers that be buy where they want
For a personal gateway? Shrug - cheap is good BUT
For the Personal
Notice I said “Vendor” - not manufacturer. I don’t buy an iPhone direct from China (or a laptop). I don’t buy my wine direct from France. I don’t buy my Vegimite from Australia, I don’t buy my imported pasta from Italy
What I do do use buy from the local Apple store, or the local liquor store, the local supermarket, aka the local vendor
I don’t like to deal with overseas shipping. I don’t like to deal with overseas ordering. Heck, I buy enough “stuff” for my personal hobby workshop I could save 15-20% ordering direct. I don’t like the hassle
I did say vendor (which you have interpreted as manufacturer) I could have said “Distributor” or to use a UK term “stockist”
AKA I’m looking for a US Sales outlet. (as you said above)
Here is the funny thing. The boss will order what he needs from where ever - and when he does, will probably go high end commercial (knowing him, maybe the Cisco)
I’m looking for a toy for home, that would probably used by ME for a week (mostly for tracking), and then hang out there as a public service. Guess what, if it is too much of a hassle, it isn’t worth it! I used to run a APRS repeater. Ran for oh, a decade, became too much of a hassle, so it got turned off. If I have to order the personal gateway from Alibaba/Banggood etc, it has just fallen (immediately ) into the “too much of a hassle, I can go to work and use theirs” category
Same reason I don’t jump on some of the cheap 3d printing stuff. Too much of a hassle - I’ll pay more from a US vendor, where the product will be here in 3-4 days, and if I have an issue, I’m talking to someone local.
The 1% you lose in transit will be far outweighed by the savings, but I can see what you mean in distribution terms, it just started out with a rather “Born in the USA” riff - I think there is a song about that.
I’d get Mouser part number 713-110991331 which they have in stock and believe has free shipping. I’d give you a link but it seems Mouser doesn’t let me.
This is a perfectly good LoRaWAN indoor gateway, you can string a cable outside for a bigger antenna if you want. Note, the core chipsets are all the same as they can only come from Semtech, the more you spend, the more they gold-plate it.
The IRONY of that song is that it isn’t a pro US song, just that folks don’t get it (listen/read it)
Thanks for the part number - THAT is exactly what I’m looking for
Like I said, the boss is likely to go CISCO etc - both for the LAN side, and the IP67 housings, the N connectors for the COAX etc
Basically, for my personal stuff, the 1% loss outweighs any savings. See, I’ll have a hobby budget of say $100. If buying overseas is $99 (in budget) vs local at $101, I just don’t buy. No hassle at all, and I saved $100 for something else. Basically the home stuff is hobby - and if the hassle of the hobby becomes greater than the happiness gained, it doesn’t happen. I’ll wait till I can afford local, or go find something else to do
OK, the usual distributors then. I’ll have to browse for consumer grade gateways there. I did see commercial grade units, and I’m quite sure that is were the boss will go for his
I believe the TTIG is available through US arm of RS Components… Newark?. also I regularly buy Laird RG186 (so RG191 for you) from Digi & Mouser though lately Farnell here in UK have been competitive …simple fire and forget systems supporting enet and/or WiFi, though I find Dragino LPS8 (sx1308 vs 1301 based) just as useable in most cases, failing that their LG308…not sure who distributes in US. In N America you have e.g. Multitech or Tektelic (Canada?) etc, a more expensive and a bit more complex/feature rich esp if looking to run inbuilt server. If you can stomach buying abroad look to RAK (a good range of concentrator cards for self builds (using Pi’s) through their Pilots through the openwrt based full systems, Dragino (full GW’s NOT single/dual packet forwarders) as above -both do very usable outdoor GW’s also that won’t break the bank!, iMST, Lorix (not used but hear ok), et al.
If you want to pay a premium, digikey has rak’s concentrator cards. Make sure you get SPI not USB.
That place named after a large south american river has their pi-based kits
Thank you - exactly what I wanted
Part of the fun - if we start selling sensors, we’re going to have to sell gateways, or at least have a source for them
Thanks. The river place will probably get an order from me (my own $$) for home. Work? Who knows what management will do.
If we get the sensor working (hint, I can already read it, and put it on LoRA (not wan) now), there is a good chance Management will look into becoming a distributor for something. Customers like one stop shopping
Thanks everyone - the boss decided to go with a RAK board purchased vis the place named after a river (like I said, don’t care where it is made, just where it is being shipped from). We’ll probably put it in a IP67 box on the roof once we get things setup. I’ll research good antennas for it. Woot
That’s a pretty good way to get started as you end up with a lot of flexibility and ability to get your fingers in there for debugging.
That said, something pi-based is a bit more dubious in deployment when maintenance might involve more than getting the keys to the roof door of your own building.
Particularly if you start to consider carrying something to resell, you’ll want to look at support issues - eg, likely something that is very bulletproof as far as software storage medium, and also customizable not only in terms of pre-configuration but also in that you can put management daemons on it to allow remote administration by your company or the customer as appropriate to a given use case.
But that’s all downstream of your initial experiments, and for that a card on a pi is great (especially if you set things up so that you can ssh in!)
Happy hacking!
Oh yeah, this is just the “starter” kit. Looks like we are in range of nothing, so why not get started. Keys? I just walk to the door and open it. We have a back outdoor deck.
Thank you all - We now have a RAK running as an indoor gateway (will probably be moved upstairs near a window soon)
The basic ttn-otaa-feather-us915-dht22 test project is indeed talking with it, so I guess that is working
Gateway ID
eui-b827ebfffeedd188