A RAK2287 Gateway module arrived today. Based on the new SX1302 chip the testing can commence.
I will post finding as the tests are undertaken.
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Very curious about this, as I’ve been on the fence about getting one of these to add an open network to the west hills in Portland!
Hi Tony,
Coul you tell me if is just RAK2287 or with PCMI adaptor too ? I’ve asking you that becose my board is on the way too
Thx and good luck with tests!
That’s an easy question. Its just a RAK2287, no PCMI adaptor.
Ok … then I should get one PCIe Pi Hat or something like this from someware …Any ideea?
Quite interested to see results of your test.
Just a quick summary of the improvement, just looking at the datasheet, that you might be able to observe:
- Huge power consumption improvement: on this gateway RAK is claiming something like a factor 4 to 6 depending of the traffic (always good to see on an always on product
) - 8 more modem: might be tricky to test, but you should be able to receive 8 SF12 + 8 SF10 at the same time on 8 different channel.
- Support of SF5/6 : this one is not part of LoRaWAN and you will need end-points based on SX126x to test it.
- There should also be some minor improvement on sensitivity compare to SX1301, especially for higher SF: hopefully this should translate in longer range
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A RAK2287 Gateway module arrived today. Based on the new SX1302 chip the testing can commence.
Did you get one with SPI or with the STM32L4 ?
I’m curious if the latter runs a version of the Semtech Pico GW firmware, or if the MCU is just another crude USB/SPI bridge.
Any actual findings on power (or as a result, heat)? RAK’s specs don’t show any difference in claims from the 2247.
Also unclear what the vague reference to the SX1261 are…
I’m finishing up a carrier board designed to host a router SoC module and an SPI RAK833/RAK2247 and trying to figure out what if any allowances I want to include to use a 2287 instead…
The sample I have is a SPI version
I understand there could be 8 versions of the RAK2287, There will be two models, one USB and the other SPI. Due to the RF filters outside the new SX1250 radio receiver chip, there could be separate models for 433, 470, 868 and 915. A total of 8 different combinations.
I do not know about a model based on a STM32L4, nor any reference to SX1261 chips. The RAK2287 is based on a SX1302 base band receiver and two SX1250 radio receivers.
In my application I’m not so interested in the power reduction of the SX1302 chip but more that it has 16 Lora decoders and can receive from 16 nodes at the same time over any combination of the 8 radio channels. That is provided the nodes are on different SF when on the same radio channel, ie Orthogonal transmissions.
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Is there some special place where the findings are posted and that I fail to find. Or haven’t the test taken place yet?
I received a couple of RAK2287 cards two weeks ago. They seem to work ok, however the 3 onboard leds are always off. Tested with room lights off, making some node transmit, but none, they not flash with traffic (uplink or downlink). I saw a post (on the manufacturers website forum) of somebody experiencing the same thing, but got no answers.
Somebody experiencing the same situation with the lastest software form the RAK repo?
If RAK follows the Semtech reference design then the LEDs are connected to GPIOs on the SX1302 rather than radio signals as in previous designs.
please see
If this indeed means that there’s no way for the SX1302 state machines to directly operate the LEDs and that must instead be done by host software (meaning host schedular delay), then that has the unfortunate consequence of meaning one can’t use a scope probe on the gateway transmit LED as a reference for checking node receive window timing, making such a gateway a bit less desirable as one’s only platform if doing deep development on node firmware.
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I had the same issue with a prototype gateway based on the Semtech reference code.
I found the three LEDs were correctly connected to the SX1302 GPIO pins 3, 4 and 5 as per the Semtech reference hardware design.
Inspecting the gateway code I found it connects these three GPIO’s as outputs and under the control of the radio module inside the SX1302 (in code its the MCU_AGC).
You may find the LEDs flash for a short period of time but not long enough to be visible. I would check with an Oscilloscope.
You can separately reconfigure each GPIO output to be under the control of the host computer and drive the GPIO outputs from the gateway code.
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