Good morning @JoostBuntinx, I have 4 Mikrotik LtAP systems with LoRa8 cards running very reliably now. They use SIM card and cellular for backhaul. Power is via the PPoE input, a mix of 24V supplies from utility power and 12V from off-grid with battery. Power consumption during RX listen is about 8W.
3 of my systems use very small Taoglas PC.81 LoRaWAN antennae mounted inside the case.
1 of my systems has been fitted with a normal 2dBi dipole LINX antenna fitted to an SMA drilled through one of the antenna dimples in the top of the case.
Using an Adeunis Field Test Device at various distances to send uplinks, the RSSI difference at the gateway is about 10dB better using the external antenna. The external LINX antenna is very even in all directions. The PC.81 antenna is more variable.
The Mikrotik LtAP with external LINX antenna has the same performance as any other gateway and professional antenna I have tested.
I have put in typical Mikrotik configurations for watchdog and firmware updating so they maintain themselves.
There have been a number of typical summer rain and thunder storms here (Scotland) since I installed them outside. As per all the Mikrotik equipment that I have had outdoors for years, no weather problems [so far!].
You’ll need to ask Mikrotik to include it in their firmware. The RouterOS platform is nice when it does what you need and includes all software and features you require, when something is missing it being closed source is a pain.
Hi @mfalkvidd and @kersing, the current Mikrotik “lora” software package that can be downloaded and installed only supports the legacy UDP forwarder. Jac is correct - Mikrotik is very good when it can do what you need and no use at all when it can’t. You get very high reliability, you get no flexibility.
Mwah, had to replace a newly installed new model hEX recently with an older one because the new one spontaneously reboot 3 times in two days. That is a nuisance when you are in online meetings because we’re working from home these days…
That’s not normal at all on good working hardware, maybe you got a defective unit? Plenty of HeX units deployed, I’d say is the most popular for micro pops/towers…
Also, really important, after each ROS upgrade, go to System > Routerboard and click the Upgrade button to upgrade the routerboard firmware, otherwise you can get unexpected behaviour.
Hello,
I’m trying to configure the LoRa-Gateway as a WiFi station/client, so far without success. I work exactly the steps as described in
Create Security Profil for wireless: OK
Change wlan1 to station and connect with Security Profil: OK
Disable DHCP-Server on wlan1: OK
Add a new DHCP-Client for wlan1: OK, however, the status is stopped and the entry seems to be invalid.
Disable NAT or a restart does not fix the problem.
The example in the MikroTik-Wiki Manual:IP/DHCP Client does not work either:
[admin@MikroTik] > /ip dhcp-client add interface=wlan1 disabled=no
[admin@MikroTik] > ip dhcp-client print detail
Flags: X - disabled, I - invalid, D - dynamic
0 ;;; defconf
interface=ether1 add-default-route=yes default-route-distance=1 use-peer-dns=yes use-peer-ntp=yes
dhcp-options=hostname,clientid status=bound address=192.168.178.20/24 gateway=192.168.178.1
dhcp-server=192.168.178.1 primary-dns=192.168.178.1 primary-ntp=192.168.178.1 expires-after=1w2d23h38m48s
1 I interface=wlan1 add-default-route=yes default-route-distance=1 use-peer-dns=yes use-peer-ntp=yes
dhcp-options=hostname,clientid
[admin@MikroTik] >
If you are new to mikrotik, you should better use webfig/#Quick_Set until you are familiar with the concepts. When you only want a connection to your existing LAN/WLAN, then configure a bridge not a router. It is a 3 minute setup, including update to newest RouterOS and Router Firmware with two reboots.
And then next try to configure LoraWAN/TTN .
On this stage the question is simply off topic or placed in the wrong community
Please post a screenshot from Bridge > Ports, are wlan1 or ether1 there?
Make sure to connect using winbox, and clicking on the wAP mac address in neighbors tab, in order not to lose the winbox connection while doing these changes.
Why are you using another dchp-client on ether1??
What happens if you enable the dchp-client on wlan1?
In this scenario, you usually create a bridge, then add ether1 and wlan1 as ports. Then add a single dhcp-client on that bridge, that’s all required from an L3 perspective.
Depending on your security, if this is a LAN I would also remove the firewall and for sure NAT, maybe use IP > Services available from to filter management access if is a concern.
Careful using QuickSet. Is only a preset of recipes, meant to be used on a just resetted to defaults router; manually setting the router then using QuickSet will lead to issues.
Another thought: especially for this devices: Since you can power them without additional effort over the included PoE injector and there is an ethernet switch in reach anyway, i prefer ethernet over wifi anytime…
Absolutely, nothing like a good ol’ wire, specially if is the only one as you use PoE!
I like to use them as cAPs too; wire them, then use the AP wifi portion as another AP in the network, works beautifully using CAPsMAN or in standalone mode.
My LoRa equipped routerboard does in fact provide outdoors wireless coverage in addition to being a LoRaWAN device.
Thank you for your advices. That helped me alot. Now I have the gateway the way I wanted it, but it took more than 3 minutes
Unfortunately, in my case, only a WLAN connection is possible. I would like to use the cable connection to get into RouterOS if necessary.
Here are my detailed steps after reset to factory default:
Change firewall for ether1 so that I can configure via the LAN cable.
Set to CPE in the quick setup
Wireless address acquisition: Automatic
Local Network:
IP Address: 192.168.88.1
DHCP server: check
DHCP Server Range: 192.168.88.10-192.168.88.254
NAT: check
Password: …
Country: Germany
Select WiFi network name and set Password
reboot
Log into RouterOS via the WiFi network
Check for updates
DHCP server for wlan1 -> disable
DHCP client for ether1 -> disable
Configure TTN
Yes, advanced usage. Even MPLS or Ethernet over IP is possible with this products. It seems they have quite a hard start in TTN Community. Not open, but flexible reliable and payable as nothing else in Network equipment. I think the LoraWAN-UDP-Forwarder was only a quick win and more stable stuff will follow…
I use these just fine on TTN - fiddly to set up via web interface compared to some but otherwise works fine for TTN with well defined frequency plan. Bullet proof since deployment and recovers easily from e.g. power outage or WiFi loss. This may be a ref to fact some designs can support other bands, configure by s/w? In their case they have the LR9 Kit for the 915Mhz band etc. (havent looked in detail but suspect same base platform (case/routerboard) but with swapped (R11?) mini pcie card to support respective bands. Product details here:
Thanks. I’m already a mikrotik user so I know the interface and PCIe-cards. [Mikrotik is extremely versatile and affordable, but has a steep learning curve.]
So your experience is that the LR8 / LR9 support TTN v3 without any legacy setting? (I would love to go for Mikrotik, but I am a bit warry that Mikrotik might not support the latest standards.)
Works fine for me… was on TTN V2 from late '20/21 then moved Oct/Nov 21 to V3 before the Dec’21 sunset, know of many others working just fine…
Not sure what you mean by this… they ‘just work’ once configured correctly per TTN V3 (and the document you link to above, though I ignore the microtck instance and just point at normal eu.cloud )
As I put up a while back its on standard SMTC PF over port 1700, on basis of if it aint brike dont ‘fix it’ I havent looked at if able to support basicstation, otherwise supports LoRaWAN specification - not sure what you mean by ‘latest standards’ whilst spec for LNS and nodes evolve over time the GW’s are essentially transparent media convertors and dont materially impact passing traffic. Have recently been looking at getting a couple more for ‘sheltered’ deployments (not quite in building/benign but not fully weather exsposed) - a farm, a market garden and a river marina, possiby off-grid with solar supply…
Bernhard
