RAK831 vs IC880A-SPI

Gateways Raspberry Pi Gateways
11

You are right, the RPi zero has a different controller that does not experience the issue the RPi3 has. However it does not have wired ethernet which for a gateway is preferable to minimize network delays.

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12

Thanks for all the input guys.
In the end I ordered an IC880a for some of the reasons I mentioned plus the discount that was on after the conference helped.
I ended up getting this adapter board also : https://shop.coredump.ch/product/ic880a-lorawan-gateway-backplane/

I’m definitely going to look into using resin io, currently I have it setup more manually.

I am using an RPi3 for now and so far haven’t experienced any issues, what kind of problems could I expect going forward if I chose to stay with it ? I do have other older RPis around I could swap to if needs be though they are fulfilling other roles in my home at the moment.

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13

I’ve made a blog post of setting up both gateways. It’s currently not a comparison, but I’m working on it at the moment to expand it a bit more.

https://oisec.net/blog/ttn-gateway-rak831-ic880a

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14

@oisecnet On your blog post you mention integrating the new Semtech software into the ttn-zh build. Why not move to JPMeijers resin.io build to switch to a packet forwarder with the TTN native protocol build in? (MP Forwarder uses the latest Semtech libraries.)

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15

Good idea to try to integrate the MP Forwarder in the ttn-zh build. I personally dislike resin.io as I usually also have some other stuff running on the gateway it self. (had some bad experiences with resin.io in the past).

I’ll give it a go today on the RAK831 (that means the MP forwarder not resin.io) :wink:

16

Just updated the RAK831 to use the MP Forwarder and it seems to work just fine :slight_smile:

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17

Can you elaborate a bit on that?
Is this related to the BCM2837 chip?
The RPi2 you can buy today (v1.2) have the same chip than the RPi3 so it wouldn’d make any difference…

18

The MP Forwarder can simple run as Docker container without using resin.io. You need only to change a few lines in the Dockerfile.template from JPMeijers and it works fine. i have running that since a couple of month.

19

To setup @kersing’s MP Forwarder on a Raspberry Pi without using resion.io you can use the following:

Update:

@Charles has updated the setup and documentation in the above github repository.
It is not needed to make below changes anymore, this is now handled via questions in setup automatically.

While this setup is meant for @Charles’s ‘RAK831-Zero’ Raspberry Pi Zero adapter board it can also be used for other (or without) adapter boards. This requires only two changes - described below - to the setup script.

When using a different (or no) adapter board the following changes should be made to the setup.sh script:

  • Configure the script with the correct GPIO port that your adapter board uses for the reset pin.
    This is on line 27: GW_RESET_PIN=25
    Note that you should specify the GPIO port number, not the physical PIN number (the name PIN is confusing here).
    For example: the RAK Raspberry Pi Adapter board uses GPIO 17 (which is physical pin 11).
    So for the RAK Raspberry Pi adapter this should be changed to: GW_RESET_PIN=17
    .
    (setup.sh will update the reset ‘pin’ (gpio) value in /opt/loragw/start.sh where it is named SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN)
    .
  • Disable the monitor part (monitor is RAK831-Zero adapter board specific) by disabling lines 60-65.
    Disable the lines by changing them to comments (put # at beginning) or delete them.
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20

Seems charles already done what I was intending to do :slight_smile: I’ll just link to his setup :slight_smile:

Concerning docker I would not prefer to run that on a PI.

21

The setup script ask for reset pin, so it should be straightforward and change it in the startup script according the value you entered.

monitor service can be disabled after install with the following command

sudo systemctl disable monitor.service

But I could change the setup to ask if monitoring is wanted :wink:

22

Good idea!

So: Yes please. :sunglasses:

And not install monitoring (and its software requirements) when not needed (instead of only disabling the service) to prevent bloating / installing unnecessary software.

23

I fried one RAK831 and one PI Zero with human error, I need to check where is my last repo hoping it was not on the fried gateway ;-(

24

Fried, ouch…

25

That’s what’s happen when you power the whole thing with 12V DC (forgot to cut wire between vin/vout of the DC/DC step down) !!!
I should have read the documentation I wrote, or I should not make 3 things at the same time :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

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26

yep :wink:

27

It is related to the clock switching frequencies (RPi3 switches between two different clock speeds)

28

thanks, updated

29

Many thanks! So it looks like it is SPI speed calculated wrong on RPi3 · Issue #2094 · raspberrypi/linux · GitHub and apparently we can disable the turbo with core_freq=250 to avoid clock switching. (The gateway doesn’t need turbo anyway)…

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30

It’s done, and I included basic documentation on how to setup and display information on OLED display (including received packet), thanks to @kersing letting gwtraf in new packet forwarder

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