I am looking to find the simplest reliable Lorawan Gateway which easily supports TTN and has WiFi + Ethernet + LTE. The LTE part is key. I’m looking for a reliable retail-available product that doesn’t require much hand-holding or support over time.
We are currently using a Multitech conduit but I find that it is far buggier, more complicated and less reliable than our “TTN Gateway” or “TTN Indoor Gateway”, which generally work flawlessly.
Does anyone have any specific recommendations for models?
Strange, I got two MultiTechs deployed and they were more or less install and forget.
Depending on your requirements (indoor/outdoor) you could look at Dragino LG308 or DLOS8. Last year I deployed a LG308 at a remote location and it’s still running without any management at all. (My TTOG is the same, configure, deploy and forget.) DLOS8 is new but based on the same firmware image used for the LG308.
BTW, my experience is to configure, deploy and stop messing with the gateway once it is running, the more changes the more issues.
@kersing, thanks so much for the fast response. In the past I thought the Multitech was OK, but now I’m finding it can have strange join behaviors with some of my devices, as well as quietly not sending downlink messages. The TTG devices do not have this issue, with the exact same device. The moment I plug them in, the issue goes away, but it tracks the Multitech even after restarts and firmware updates.
I found the behavior issues started following an upgrade to 5.x firmware. Today I updated to the latest 5.2.1 (I believe), from something close, like 5.1.x. The issue persisted, so I did a factory reset and tried to do the TTN hookup script, which error’d out, even when running with ‘sudo’.
I suppose I’m just interested in something very simple, as my requirements are so modest: just packet forwarding.
Your issues with newer firmware might be caused by the JIT buffer that is part of the newer packet forwarders. The earliest firmware just sent a downlink after it arrived, even if the timestamp was in the (recent) past. The JIT buffer version rejects those downlinks making network latency an important cause of issues.
I can’t recall the TTG code using the ‘age’ check so that might explain the difference in behavior.
@kersing, I see. I’m not sure what to make about the ‘join’ issues, which unfortunately tracked directly to the Multitech. Would you recommend changing back to the legacy packet forwarder, and is that even an option?
Given all of this info, would you still recommend I try the LG308 with a LTE card?
Didn’t find anything suitable so ended up designing our own main board to tie together the modules that seemed best for each part of the task.
That said, (with anything but TTIG where you are locked in) it’s important to distinguish hardware issues from software ones. If the hardware is suitable, some software (not necessarily the manufacturers!) can make the most of it.
Totally, thank you. I imagine the Multitech hardware is totally fine and would be a ok platform. Since my needs are so minimal I’m just looking for a very simple turnkey packaged solution.
Yes. I’ve got 2 of them (model with 4G) deployed and one of them has been running for well over a year without any issues. I haven’t updated the firmware because the older firmware didn’t include remote management capabilities and I needed something to deploy at a remote site quickly so I didn’t have time to provide that capability myself. Haven’t needed remote management during that year either, the gateway just works and forwards packets both directions without any hickups.
Hi @pomplesiegel, I use [Europe] the Mikrotik LtAP with LTE modem and LoRa MPCIe cards:
4G GPS Enabled Mobile Router LtAP LTE Kit - RBLtAP-2HnDR11e-LTE
LoRaWAN Concentrator Gateway Card Mini PCIe 863-870 MHz - R11e-LoRa8
The combination meets your requirements list.
I usually add a Taoglas PC.81 internal antenna or a LINX ANT-868 external antenna, depending on the coverage needed.
Setup time is about 1hr.
Parts cost is a bit over 200 Euros.
The disadvantage of the MikroTik solution is its closed source firmware. The Dragino and RAK solutions are openwrt based and (at least for Dragino) sources are provided. So if push comes to shove you will be able to fix issues.
And the RAK team, whilst there may be some translation / language issues, are proactive on their forum.
Not used Dragino so can’t comment on their public support forums - I don’t use them because in the UK product availability is almost non-existent. To their credit they have recently tagged all the LoRa receivers they sell that aren’t suitable for LoRaWAN in red text on the product pages - so I’m feeling warm & fuzzy enough to try a couple of devices & a gateway if anyone can point out a simple way of buying one.
Yup, got them bookmarked, it’s the lack of 8 channel gateways that make me reluctant to support them - I’ll message them again to see if they do have stock of the proper gateways.
[EDIT] - I’m not referring to Dragino here, I’m not keen on UKIoT store as they don’t stock 8 channel gateways but do stock single channel gateways which is make work for the all of us.
Their 8 Channel LPS8 has performed well for me with little trouble and I have heard good things e.g. from Jac @kersing and others about the LG308 though still waiting to try out myself along with the DLOS8 outdoor unit and others on roadmap. PM me and I’m sure @Edwin will help me get units to you for eval if needed. Yes it is good that they ‘clarified’ LoRa vs LoRaWAN position as the single & dual channel PF’s have caused/continue to cause no end of pain with TTN deployments as end users often dont trap the difference early enough or just push on regardless I try to encourage users to change over to at least the LPS8 where I find them
Without getting @cslorabox all excited, are there any other gateways with flash/read-only based cores that have a reliable source of supply & published source code.
Hi @kersing, the OP, @pomplesiegel, did not specify open source firmware in his list of requirements and seemed to me to be requesting suggestions for ready-to-go retail products. While an open source gateway is very important for many people, for other people it’s simply not relevant and therefore not a disadvantage.
RAK is a bit of an odd situation, unlike Dragino who appear to do a proper source release, RAK do not publish source for their production OpenWRT gateways like the RAK 7258 (even the Linux, busybox, etc part they are legally obligated to), but they did publish source for an earlier experimentor kit where you got a module with the same processor, a LoRa concentrator card, and a handful of jumper wires.
Those sources will run just fine on the production gateway (at most the concentrator reset gpio might be different). If you go that route you get a more vanilla setup that makes only minimal SPI-related patches to the Semtech repos, but that’s arguably preferable anyway.
I think they do publish source, or at least most of it, for their pi based setups, if one is willing to depend on a pi and its sdcard. And if they don’t it’s not like there’s any great secret in how to make a gateway with a pi; though some understanding of the ways they try to get a GPS in might be useful, which appears to either involve repurposing the bluetooth UART or some sort of I2C setup.
I’ve got the RAK7258 box here, but we ended up not using it as if you buy it with their LTE modem you lose the only USB port, and we’ve seen the modems we use occasional get stuck in a way that requires a power cycle (rebooting the host Linux does nothing). As a result our custom motherboard has a USB hub chip with the switches for downsteam port power control actually implemented. And since in ours the modem is socketed not soldered we can use the one we prefer today, or a different one tomorrow. (I think the Dragino boxes may have a hub, but not sure on that)
Buying a USB hub with port power control, or making one in the form of an mPCIe-USB adapter would be an option, too, we actually fabbed a couple of boards along those lines but never assembled them as the full motherboard turned out to work and had more potential to support some application-unique stretch goals.
I try to encourage users to change over to at least the LPS8 where I find them 