Hello,
We saw our Multitech LoRa (MTAC-LORA-H 868 card) MTCDTIP gateway fail to initialize the concentrator after a WAN outage a few weeks ago. The gateway was configured as a LoRa Basics station with TTN Sandbox at the time, hence configuration would have been automatically provisioned. Starting from scratch with a new Basics gateway entry from a new TTS (enterprise) account did not seem to help.
Looking at the logs, a cryptic message regarding firmware verification showed up (PoE brownout? Clock-skew? Unrelated issue with subsequent error-handling procedure?)
Click for preceding logs
INFO: [main] resetting lora **************
INFO: FPGA supported features: [TX filter] [Spectral Scan]
ERROR: Version of calibration firmware not expected, actual:4 expected:2
ERROR: [main] failed to start the concentrator, resetting lora and trying again
INFO: FPGA supported features: [TX filter] [Spectral Scan]
ERROR: Version of calibration firmware not expected, actual:4 expected:2
ERROR: [main] concentrator cannot be started, exiting
*** Beacon Packet Forwarder for Lora Gateway ***
Version: 4.0.17
*** Lora concentrator HAL library version info ***
Version: 5.0.11;
***
INFO: Little endian host
INFO: found global configuration file global_conf.json, parsing it
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named SX1301_conf, parsing SX1301 parameters
INFO: lorawan_public 1, clksrc 1
INFO: no configuration for LBT
INFO: antenna_gain 0 dBi
INFO: Default Temperature Compensation
INFO: Configuring TX LUT with 16 indexes
INFO: radio 0 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 867500000, RSSI offset -166.000000, tx enabled 1, tx_notch_freq 0
INFO: radio 1 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 868500000, RSSI offset -166.000000, tx enabled 0, tx_notch_freq 0
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 0> radio 1, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 1> radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 2> radio 1, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 3> radio 0, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 4> radio 0, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 5> radio 0, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 6> radio 0, IF 200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 7> radio 0, IF 400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora std channel> radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 250000 Hz bw, SF 7
INFO: FSK channel> radio 1, IF 300000 Hz, 125000 Hz bw, 50000 bps datarate
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named gateway_conf, parsing gateway parameters
INFO: gateway MAC address is configured to [redacted]
INFO: server hostname or IP address is configured to "eu1.cloud.thethings.network"
INFO: upstream port is configured to "1700"
INFO: downstream port is configured to "1700"
INFO: restart interval is configured to 600 minutes
INFO: duty cycle will NOT be enforced
INFO: duplicate packets received with low SNR will NOT be forwarded
INFO: packets received with a valid CRC will be forwarded
INFO: packets received with a CRC error will NOT be forwarded
INFO: packets received with no CRC will NOT be forwarded
INFO: [main] resetting lora **************
INFO: [main] resetting lora **************
INFO: FPGA supported features: [TX filter] [Spectral Scan]
ERROR: Version of calibration firmware not expected, actual:4 expected:2
ERROR: [main] failed to start the concentrator, resetting lora and trying again
INFO: FPGA supported features: [TX filter] [Spectral Scan]
ERROR: Version of calibration firmware not expected, actual:4 expected:2
ERROR: [main] concentrator cannot be started, exiting
*** Beacon Packet Forwarder for Lora Gateway ***
Version: 4.0.17
*** Lora concentrator HAL library version info ***
Version: 5.0.11;
***
INFO: Little endian host
INFO: found global configuration file global_conf.json, parsing it
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named SX1301_conf, parsing SX1301 parameters
INFO: lorawan_public 1, clksrc 1
INFO: no configuration for LBT
I spent a while on this red-herring trying to replace the firmware through firmware upgrades and factory resets, however only upon doing diffs with older configuration backups did the culprit reveal itself (even though it was staring at me with INFO: lorawan_public 1, clksrc 1).
INFO: [main] resetting lora **************
INFO: FPGA supported features: [TX filter] [Spectral Scan]
INFO: [main] concentrator started, packet can now be received
I eventually learned that while most boards follow Semtech reference design for SX1301 where the second SX1257 is used to clock the concentrator and the first radio, Multitech’s SX1301 card follows the SX1302/SX1303 clocking hierarchy where the first radio (radio 0) in the RF chain index is used as the clocking source.
radio_1 provides clock to concentrator for most devices except MultiTech. For MultiTech set to 0
As such, I now have to override the clksrc to 0 using packet forwarder mode with a manually edited config. Perhaps consider adding a gateway parameter for clksrc to the TTN/TTI CLI, so that I can set it up as a Basics station again.