I am a bit confused when reading all the reports about problems here and please sorry, if this has already been discussed.
LoRa is very exiting, especially the possibility that the v2 gateways offer (exact timestamp for more accurate geolocation).
Would anyone give me a hint of some cheap possiblity to build such a gateway? Like with a rPi hat for example? Which one to choose? It does not need to be professional - it’s just hobby at the moment
BTW I would even accept kits, the reflow oven is ready to do some work!
Problems with stability, bugs in the stack. But maybe old stories, ignore, I just like to give it a try by myself.
Sorry I am new to all this.
I’ve been told by Semtech that a so called “V2 Gateway” adds the exact timestamp to received frames for more accurate geolocation. At least I thing the gateway needs some sort of GPS hardware to do TOA/TDOA.
Cheap for me means unter $100 total price for a gateway.
First, make sure not to mix V2 of the TTN stack with V2 concentrator design for gateways. I haven’t seen a lot of information on stability issues or bugs in the gateways lately. (The notable exception seems to stability of the the first generation TTN Gateway for some people)
Given the $100 total price I don’t think there are any options at all. All concentrator boards, just one of the components, seem to start at price above that point so there is no way to get a total solution below $100. The only sub $100 solution I can think of at the moment is the TTN Indoor Gateway which does not have the GPS required for high resolution time stamp.
Before you get too worried about tracking down a V2 concentrator, take some time to make sure that the (not all the impressive) theoretical geolocation performance is sufficient to be useful to you. And keep in mind that you will need at least two (and likely more) gateways to leverage that capability for anything more than a circular range.
Especially as you describe yourself as a hobbyist with a low budget, it seems a little doubtful that this is where you want to start. If you want to build an inexpensive gateway to experiment with, (and as along as you aren’t in a listen-before-talk jurisdiction) an SPI concentrator card hanging on a pi is definitely workable, most of the issues are with the unsuitability of a pi (or any linux system using an SD card for its root fileystem) for deployment somewhere that you cannot readily get at to maintain. But in the window of your home or office? Sure.
Thanks for your response! Maybe I should get a bit more precise at this point. I know how cheap I can get a micro gateway. I only ‘think’ like a hobbyist, like a student, one that likes to play and experiment with decent technologies, with no big budget background, no precise target application but many ideas, friends and ethusiasm in mind, one that likes to play with the maximum of possibilities that LoRa/TTN can offer. And geolocation is one of the killer applications, one that IMHO is a big argument to catch folks to join all this. Of course not the only one but a good one. That is why I asked how cheap can one get the more precision V2 gateways.
even if you can build a ‘cheap’ V2 gateway (next year probably) then your 'killer app depends on other V2 gateways installed , So all in all… wait a while or build or buy a current gateway.
“or build … a current gateway.” good point. I already had this in mind. We (me and some guys in my company) should really start calculating this business case.
Thanks UdLoRa for this important issue! We are already in contact with Semtech. We’ll try to figure out how ‘cheap’ this can me at the end. Depends a lot on the volume of course…
