I have an P-NUCLEO-LRWAN3 dev kit which should work on 433MHz TTN but am having trouble getting the device connected.
As far as I can tell the gateway is operating correctly and does connect over ethernet to TTN as I have a “connected” or something similar message in the console.
Does anyone have any experience using an LRWAN3 in the UK at 433MHz who has managed to successfully get both a gateway and sensor connected? All the information regarding to TTN with the NUCLEO boards relates to the LRWAN2.
Hi @callum413 unfortunately your research pre buy looks to have let you down as TTN in EU (yes inc UK! ) is run in the 868Mhz band - 433Mhz isnt supported (not sure any region of TTN supports this as primarily we use 868, 915 & 923 or minor variations there off around the world apart from China (~480Mhz))
You will need to swap systems - will vendor accept return & replace?
Thanks for the response, I was worried this was the case but was hoping to find a work around as I’m struggling to sort out a return. was hoping i could get the LRWAN3 (let’s just say I had some bad intel provided to me , should have checked it) working rather than the LRWAN2 which is the version I should have got a hold of.
Looking at the “add gateway/add sensor” section it does have an option for “EU433”. not sure if this is active yet. Documentation is a bit confusing too as it states that 433 is not supported in the EU but that relates to V2 TTN and there’s no mention of it in V3 TTN
One option for the GW side would be to get a replacement LoRaWAN concentrator/baseband card for 868Mhz and swap that out and update board s/w…you can grab alternate 868nodes easy enough - plenty in the market
The clue was in the description :LF Band and fact paired tranceiver in the package is the SX1278 China varient (for 433/470/480 Mhz.
Also does the 3 suffer from same design defect as the 2 in that IIRC, and as called out elsewhere on the Forum, the output power of the GW is too low (6dbm vs nominal 14dBm) - I think they failed to follow the full Semtech SX1301 Ref design and ommited a PA or some such, meaning that whilst receive sensitivity follows normal design and it can hear distant nodes it lacks the umph (good tech term dont you think!) to reach back to them. Some Forumites consider this disruptive to the network as NS may select your GW to reach/service other(s) nodes not knowing it is below par for the job. I grabbed one to play with and had a little fun with it a couple of years back but never deployed in anger and returned it to its blister pack because of above…
And as a gateway, the some person (not me) would also point out that the closed dot bin file and the general lack of config other that the dot bin file makes for a hard to manage gateway.
I too have a HF one in its blister pack pending some time to wire it to a Pi or similar but the Tx flaw reduces the inclination to negative values.
It may be possible to hotwire the LF to a Pi as the lack of Tx range won’t act as a denial of service to the network as you’ll be the only 433MHz LoRaWAN on TTS CE in your village.
As to any other wrinkles that may be thwarting progress, the Cube MX LRWAN code base doesn’t do some regions properly at 868/915/928MHz, so it may well be clueless with respect to any form of 433 as the Italians, bless their cotton little socks, can’t get a decent espresso in China so will have mentally crossed them off the “make it work” list - I doubt it even made the “let’s pretend we made an effort” list.
I’ve got some 868MHz nodes available so that’s a positive at least but for the effort of getting a hold of another concentrator card I might as well just get a new gateway. I’ll be having a think about it.
That was a concern initially but I’m able to get the gateway on TTN fine and that’s enough for me at the moment. Although generally I’ve found the STM support to be inconsistent at best.
There seem to be some issues in the software for the end node that are causing issues too so if I can’t get any communication between the two I’ll cut my losses and find a better solution.
Being able to “connect” the gateway to TTN doesn’t necessarily mean that you’ll get proper handling of EU 433 packets. There’s more to regional settings than just the frequencies, and both gateway and node have to be registered for the same regional settings plan, which has to be both supported by TTN software and legal where you are.
The last published documentation https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/frequency-plans/ shows no 433 plan yet defined and supported for Europe. In fact the only “low” band shown is one in a different range of frequencies for China which would be neither appropriate nor even legal to use in Europe.
@cslorabox Yes I was, I believe the feature may have been added in the V3 stack and references to the V2 stack have not been updated to include it but that is just an assumption.
) is run in the 868Mhz band - 433Mhz isnt supported (not sure any region of TTN supports this as primarily we use 868, 915 & 923 or minor variations there off around the world apart from China (~480Mhz))
, should have checked it) working rather than the LRWAN2 which is the version I should have got a hold of.
