I’ve just begun my LoRaWAN journey. My goal is to set up some GPS trackers and to that end I have bought a range of units. I have tried connecting one of them (TTGO T_Beam) with little success and it occurred to me that having my own gateway might be advantageous. I have bought the Jaycar “duinotech” unit that appears to be much like the “Draguino” gateway. I have successfully connected the unit to the internet and followed a tutorial on how to register a gateway but as it stands, I haven’t been able to get a connection. Ihave a feeling that my server settings are incorrect, presently this is set to “thethings.meshed.com.au” port 1700. I have the gateway ID “A8:40:41:18:05:91:ffff” and I have added that to the registration page in the Australian console. The manual for the unit is pretty poor and does not offer any example of joining TTN. Thanks in advance for any advice. BTW I am located in Wollongong NSW which is a bit of a TTN hotspot all things considered
The diagram says that device is based on a single LoRa SX1276/78, so despite the missleading claims of the manufacturer, its not compatible with TTN\LoRaWAN and should be not be used.
On the product page it is listed as LoRa gateway. LoRaWAN is an additional layer on LoRa that defines additional requirements which this gateway can’t fulfill. Sorry to say, for LoRaWAN you bought a lemon.
Ensure you get one with an 8 in its part number - like LPS8 - Dragino fell in to the same trap of creating SCPF’s as well but they clearly mark them on their website as not for LoRaWAN use.
The LIG16 (multiple of 8, so all good), is getting thumbs up here for low power consumption.
Why 8? Because a compliant gateway can receive on 8 channels at once.
I’ve landed on this unit link, which appears to have the magic “8” in the designation. Can you confirm that it would be OK?
EDIT: I’ts an LPS8 so based on your response earlier it should be fine. Thanks again for your input
Cheers
Ben
here is a link to the Dragino wiki. I have three of the Jaycar units that I haven’t yet got round to messing with so will be interested to see how you get on:- Connect to TTN - Wiki for Dragino Project
Its now 2023 and I decided to resurrect the two Duinotech units I bought back in ?2018. They still have them on the shelves at Jaycar. Seems that they must be able to be used on someone’s cloud somewhere? They seem to have a little Linux Server inside. Anyway, what is the recommended plan? Any chance they said sorry and gave a refund? Meantime I ordered a couple of similar items from EBay US (via shipping service).
“2pcs ESP32 OLED LoRa 915MHz Module + Heltec LoRa Case for LoRawan Gateway USA | eBay”
Thanks
Barry Marshall
Use them as LoRaWAN end device. Or Lora gateway. You (still) won’t be able to use them as LoRaWAN gateways as they lack the hardware required for that purpose (an standards compliant LoRaWAN concentrator chipset with two associated tuners)
Those are not useable as gateway either. Just nodes. The chipset isn’t capable of receiving on multiple channels with different spreading factors which is required for any LoRaWAN compliant gateway. So use them as end devices, but don’t attempt to connect them as gateways to TTN as that will result in disruptions for other users.
Don’t buy anything else until you checked it’s viable?
Tell us what you want to build and we can make recommendations.
You can use the ESP32 units as a device with Arduino & LMIC-node. The Duinotech will be somewhat harder to setup as the ATmega328 will be tight on memory but still do-able.
For an actual gateway a TTIG is a good place to start.
OK, Thanks.
I’ll update in a couple of weeks. Meantime I’ll buy a gateway which really does work. These things can be just local or ?nodes. What is the best value?
