Does anyone have experience with the Pycom Pygate gateway? I’ve seen almost no mention in the TTN forums, and it’s been shipping for a few months now (Digikey has US 915 MHz gateways in stock for fair prices).
I have a Raspberry Pi & LoRaGo Port gateway I’m in the process of resurrecting - the SD card got corrupted and it wouldn’t boot. I didn’t have time to troubleshoot/rebuild then, and I did not save a card image
In the meantime, I’m also thinking of adding a second outdoor-mounted gateway based on the Pycom Pygate board combined with a WiPy, using the Pycom Universal IP67 Case.
Have you searched the forum for other possible users? I remembered Tim @cultsdotelecomatgmai posting about his new arrival (not a new baby!), perhaps he has had a bit of time to play/evaluate?
I was promised a couple of eval units at last TTN Conf but no one followed up so cant advise personally though it looked promising and their other products have good reputation with apparent good support from Fred & the team…
Good evening, the Pycom Pygate that I reported on has been completely stable and seems to perform very well.
My next step for my own interest, which I will report on the forum, is to run it purely on battery and to see how long it runs. I want to see if it could work as a temporary pop-up on a small battery.
I was interested in it for just such an use case as possible alternate to TTIG or Dragino LPS8… as well as as a small form factor design to put in a dinrail case for industrial monitoring/processes…had printed some cases ready but Pycom never delivered ah well guess it was impact of slow down then lock down soon after the Conf… with Kickstarter/paying customers a likely priority since…
Given that they just became available after a years wait for the kickstarter backers I’m not surprised. Mine literally arrived weeks ago and I’m currently busy with other things so I haven’t even unwrapped the package yet.
Have used a public design for the cases? I might need something when I find the time to take a look at them. (Should have two and one PoE shield IIRC)
Was planning to use modifed RPi DIN cases - ended up using them when I got bored in lock down…for RPi’s! Will check if have some left in spares…did a bunch…and will send you 1 or 2 if I can find them
Found designs on Thingiverse and another place - will check…
One example - IIRC the Pygate mounting holes were just a bit smaller spacing than the RPi mountigs so easily adapted, given smaller size relative to RPi. Was looking to cut a couple of small slots in longer edge of housing for pwr, external SMA Ant, etc.
Was waiting to check when in hand as suspected there was just enough space at end of case to add a small DC-DC to adapt a standard DIN PSU feed…
I’m looking for a high RPi 3 case that will take the RPi and my LoRaGo Port gateway. Since the LoRaGo gets kinda hot, I want to add a small fan inside or out.
Pycom says their IP67 case will hold the Pygate and WiPy.
Hi @Saelkind, this photo is the pygate alongside a standard Pycom IP67 enclosure. The pygate and small PCB antenna will fit well inside the enclosure but adding a battery like the 3000mAh LiPo shown would not be possible.
For a temporary pop-up gateway, it would be simple to include a very small LiPo, e.g. 150mAh, inside the enclosure and use an external USB battery bank with the small battery providing power during USB battery bank changeovers. Or just use a bigger and better enclosure.
I powered the Pycom pygate with WiFi backhaul from a fully-charged 3000mAh LiPo battery. It ran for just over 3 hours with a fairly low workload - about 850 uplinks and about 50 downlinks.
The bucket arithmetic is pretty simple:
3Ah runs it for 3 hours.
It draws about 1A at 3.7 V = about 3-4 Watts power consumption. As expected.
Amazon lists lots of USB power banks at low cost with capacity up to 26800mAh. Some with capacity displays and even small PV charging panels.
So, it should be possible to run a very portable pop-up type gateway for 12+ hours. It could obviously be paired with a mobile WiFi hotspot or mobile phone for backhaul.
Since I would put it on the apartment porch railing or corner post, I’d probably plug a USB wall wart into the outlet out there, assuming I could com up with a safe waterproof way to do so.
I see no mention of a GPS capability for the gateway board, so I assume I’d have to add a GPS receiver myself? Not that it would move - so not a biggie - the GPS built into my LoRaGo port does not see any satellites inside my appartment, so I fix the location from Google Maps coordinates.
Over 75% of the gateways used for the community network (my estimate) don’t have GPS. Its use is limited anyway so I wouldn’t bother.
Besides, the main reason to add a GPS to a gateway would be to provide more accurate timing and for that you need to feed PPS to the concentrator, I don’t see any connector for that purpose on PyGate.
Actually there is an GPS PPS input on a multifunction header on the board.
One thing I will say for Pycom is that they’ve put together a very nice writeup of how the SX130x actually works and is operated by a host as part of their data sheet, which is worth reading for all users of Semtech concentrators. Maybe I’m forgetting, but I don’t recall seeing it set out quite as clearly in any other source.
My curiosity though is this: has anyone managed to find the code that makes it operate as a gateway? I’m assuming that it is either micropython, or else some adaption of the Semtech C codebase doing the heavy lifting behind the scenes.
Data good on some aspects but ambiguos/unclear/conflicted on some basics. e.g.
So both industrial and consumer temp range called out - so which is it? also if that is abs max, what is operating limit to stay safe under warranty? (I may have missed but couldn’t see called out in spec on quick read.)… I know will do as recommended and check what is/may ordered…
Ok can see variants by op freq and bundles with PoE adapter…but no temp variant
May be a clue in Regulator declaration?
Ah so its commercial then?
Note the OEM Warning also highlighted…if yo integrate it with other products ina system your not allowed to tell people how to remove (e.g. exchange if changing territory or if a unit defective…not a hobbyist product…confirmed by…
Just asking/highlighting…
Perhaps someone from Pycom can comment & clarify, is there a roadmap to wider temp versions?
Is it ok to add a WiPy module as indicated in the 1st diagram in the datasheet or does that open up a world of pain and additional costs?
I hadn’t thought much about the low end of the temp ranges, which surprises me because in my professional life I often have - 0 deg C is insufficient around here. - 20 °C is close enough, -4 °F is extremely rare around here, especially recently.but single digits °F is seen up to a handful of days in a given winter. We used x86 architecture processors, which are never rated below 0 °C - so were dependent on those few fanless industrial/transportation computer vendors who bother to test and bin the Intel chipsets by low temperature tolerance for different applications. They can warrant some product variants for low temperature range uses using the “binned” chipsets.
Unless I can hope that the internal heating in an IP67 enclosure from an always-on PyGate and WiPy generate enough delta-T to keep it about 0 deg C - sounds likely. Since I think I see a heat sink on the baseband chip, it seems likely.
Alas it looks like the source for this is not yet open; presumably it may someday show up as part of their micropython fork but for the moment appears to only be available in binary builds from some internal branch: the source-form examples for using it have constants that don’t seem to appear anywhere else in their code repos.
So in terms of low-end gateways based on ESP chips, at present 0 of 2 are maintainable, both pygate and TTIG being closed source.
Will check if have some left in spares…did a bunch…and will send you 1 or 2 if I can find them 
