I operate 3 gateways, 2 in Assen, one in a nature reserve in Overijssel. 95+% of all traffic is my own (weight/temperature of my beehives). So hardly any further nodes in the area that want to connect.
Assen had one really good gateway on top of the police tower, 50 meters high. That gateway has disappeared (or set private).
I also have an end node at the Ketelmeer. That communicated happily with a gateway at 130 m height (TV tower Lelystad) until recently. That gateway disappeared as well.
Eyeballing TTN mapper, the number of gateways is certainly not increasing in the above areas.
Also pilot initiatives in the area have died without a trace, e.g. Assen Smart City.
Hi Rob, I think your post title is a very much over-generalization In the contrary: in parts of the Netherlands coverage is growing quickly, e.g. looking in the Utrecht/Gelderland provinces: here, the water authority (Waterschap Vallei en Veluwe) deployed tens of gateways in the last few months (thanks @WaterschapValleiEnVe!). I am now also in contact with SURF, the managing organization of the IT infrastructure of lots of higher-education institutes, as they are investigating the deployment of gateway across a number of campuses (campi?).
While it may be the case that the original initiatives are slowly disappearing (NL being the home-ground of TTN means that many projects started many years ago), there definitely is a large interest into LoRaWAN.
Personally, I am working on the project āMeet je leefomgevingā (website outdated as Iām hard at work upgrading the project) for sensor-boxes at middle schools in Veenendaal. This project is now also expanding to other schools (exchanging sensor boxes with one, the other building their own). And weāve recently been nominated (see here), helping us to actively expand the project. So thatās one you can support Iām soldering new microcontrollers as we speak!
As a āsingleā person (not speaking of marital status there ), it may be difficult getting coverage back up, but we may be able to find the right people/network to discuss blind spots! If there are any SURF-using institutes around your place, let me know so I can reach out to my contacts there.
Or it might have failed. The hardware deployed would be almost 9 years old by now and Iāve had a number of gateways of that age die on me over the past year due to flash wear. (A well known brand, not home made RPi)
I have spare gateways ready to be deployed in the north of NL if someone has appropriate locations. (required are power, IP connectivity and a place to mount the gateway and antenna)
@KapiteinRob some personal reflection and experiences:
Building a network is hard work sometimes. Takes a lot of e-mails, phone calls, explaining etcetera. And money of course.
On the long term building a community or network with governments, communities of citizens, schools, companies is necessary. And ownership and funding as well.
My experience last years is that you always can find money and collaboration with the right story. Gateways are not a goal itself, but a ābackboneā for lots of opportunities.
And personal contact is important. Does the manager of the radio tower know what brilliant things you are doing with TTN? If he knows, he will take responsibility to take care of the gateway. It shouldnāt happen that he doesnāt recieve any message when he turns of the gatewayā¦
Update him sometimes with results and successes. Write a nice text for the newsletter of his company.
@KapiteinRob
Follow up:
The Assen gateway has been shutdown. The local government (provincie Drenthe) stopped supporting the initiative years ago and the person that kept things running stopped earlier this year.
Would there be sufficient interest and drive to start a legal entity to step up and try to resurrect things? @WaterschapValleiEnVe provided us with a nice overview of what is involved. During startup you need a well connected individual with a lot of time on their hands and a drive to get this going (again).
I set up a gateway in 2016 on the roof of a 25m-high building in Gouda (NL) in 2016, and administer another in the area of Den Haag. Organised a couple of meetups in the beginning with fellow gateway owners. The gateway is currently happily receiving packets (> 25k per day) but Iām actually only using it myself now for receiving positions from a ttnmapper node a few times per month. Over the years, I had to reset it a couple of times (got too hot?), replaced a power supply once.
I feel thereās not much left of the ācommunityā feeling like there was in the beginning. I donāt feel welcome here on the forum.
Next time my gateway goes down Iām not sure if I will bother to fix it again.
I am not sure what triggered the second half of your message but I donāt feel it is justified. The interest in LoRaWAN has dwindled over time. Even The Things Network meetups in Amsterdam havenāt been scheduled for ages. The technology is no longer sexy and new and most amateurs found they could use zigbee, Bluetooth and WiFi to for their uses, all of which are a lot cheaper. (Zigbee temperature and humidity sensor goes for less then 10 euros and often includes a display, LoRaWAN ones are at least 30 euros and those with displays often well over 60 euros).
So interest has slowed down. So have contributors on the forum. Only a handful of people visit the forum on a regular base and take time to answer questions. They invest well over 10 hours a week in answering questions. And yes, there will be topics that canāt be discussed and are hidden as a result of that (never deleted by the way). Mostly topics that concern violations of the fair use policy or pushing the limits resulting in additional charges to TTI (who pay several thousand euros a month to provide us with a free environment to use).
And repeat offenders will be silenced for a couple of hours, not banned or deleted. (That only happens to outright spammers advertising questionable or illegal services)
You can decide to resurrect a your gateway when it fails. Or not. Just as you can decide that you are part of the community and help those asking questions on the forum. I notice that most questions go unanswered if those you accuse of unfriendly behavior donāt answer them so may-be they are at least trying to keep the community alive?
In the contrary: in parts of the Netherlands coverage is growing quickly, e.g. looking in the Utrecht/Gelderland provinces: here, the water authority (Waterschap Vallei en Veluwe) deployed tens of gateways in the last few months (thanks