Questions about the The Things Industries Indoor Gateway 868MHz

Gateways TTIG - The Things Indoor Gateway
1

This cheap The Things Indoor gateway seems interesting.

But I have 2 questions.

  1. There is this reference to “indoor” but what is unclear is what “indoor means”. Only for indoor nodes because this gateway has limited range compared to the bigger brother?
  2. I have 3 sides in apartment. If I buy 3 of these and put it in rooms that faces the 3 different windows to cover every direction, will this help or will this interfere?
2

In this context ‘indoor’ is a ref to the environment in which it can operate indoor (generally doesnt need to be water proof, splash proof, dust proof, etc (protected from rain by being indoors!) vs outdoor unit which will normally be specified with an IP rating e.g. IP65, IP67 etc. In addition outdoor units may have to stand in full sun (adding to internally generated heat) and/or handle extremes of cold - can it restart in winter after a power outage, are the compenents operating in spec over temp range etc.

FYI Devices such as the TTIG are described as microGW’s and are often based around the SX1308 vs the original SX1301 concentrator/babseband chip. The SX1308 is cheaper, slightly lower sensitivity spec and only speced across a narrower temp range as generally expected to work in a more benign environment (e.g in the home or an office)… :slight_smile:

3 Likes
3

Is there a minimum distance between 2 gateways?

4

I have seen documentation a long time ago that suggested a distance of a couple of meters would be required between gateways. Also keep gateways away from cell towers in countries where mobile operators use frequencies close to the LoRaWAN frequencies.

5

Deploying multiple gateways in the same location is not likely to be beneficial.

You’d be better off getting a single higher quality gateway, especially one able to use wired Ethernet for backhaul and one where (as in almost everything else on the market) the key software is open source and known issues don’t fester without repair.

Given one of your other posts indicates you have a RAK 2245 modem that can use a standard open source packet forwarder merely by dialing down the SPI bus speed, a TTIG is likely to be a step backwards (at least as long as the filesystem of the pi or whatever you have the modem plugged into doesn’t eat itself)

6

Interesting and useful feedback.

7

Hello all,

can anyone help me with the Indoor Gateway BOM ?
Can anyone send me, what is the type/value of LED 2 and R13.
I damaged the parts, while removing the case

Thanks in advance,
Chris

8

If R13 connects LED 2 it’s probably not critical. Without the LED the gateway should almost certainly still work. If you replace the LED and start with a large resistor (say 1K) you’d probably just have a weak light, you could progressively reduce it. Or measure the open circuit voltage look up the LED forward voltage and calculate a resistor that would lead to a few milliamps through the LED.

But if R13 is not for the LED the situation might be more complicated.