The hard RAK831 cafe part 1

Documentation for the module is online now at their website

Shipment arrived

Nice to not just get a board but have antenna and more included.

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That all was for ā‚¬102? :open_mouth:

Iā€™ve paid $120 (excluding shipping), for the set. Being used to the bare bones approach of iC880a modules I did not expect to get an FT2232HL, antenna, cables and a module nicely sandwiched between perspex shields. The shipment includes everything required to get started using an USB connection between a Linux host and the concentrator.

For interested parties, the SMA connector is RP-SMA.

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I guess it wonā€™t take long before the first RPI adapter PCBā€™s show up :sunglasses:

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@kersing There is a pin labelled CSN on the silk screen, does it correspond to the SPI Chip select line ? on a raspberry pi 3 would this correspond to pin no 24 GPIO 8 (SPI_CE0_N) ?

Hi Guys, just got the RAK831 concentrator working via the semtech github repo (https://github.com/Lora-net/lora_gateway ) code and the sample they provide.

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RAK831 runs fine with mp_pkt_fwd. Next step is a PCB to connect the RPi and the RAK831. (BTW if you use an RPi enabling SPI save a lot of time troubleshooting)

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Itā€™s available again from their Aliexpress store. ā‚¬104,36, and for ā‚¬4,35 you get a complimentary baffling enclosure.

So the era of cheap multichannel gateways has come to be? :wink:

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yep :upside_down_face:

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Just to inform you guys, Iā€™m working on a small Board to connect the RAK831 to the Pi. It is electricaly fused and features an BME280 Sensor.

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whatā€™s the purpose of this temp sensorā€¦ the board temp or the environment ?
Is it theoretically possible to have an I2C sd1306 displayā€¦ showing the time and contents of the last packet received or other status things like TTN connection ? :sunglasses:

The sensor is just for ā€œgeneral purposeā€. Monitoring of the environment where the Gateway sits or how you wanna call itā€¦ I placed it as much away from the rPi cpu as possible.

hmm, theres no really good place for an oled display. I could add an header with i2c to connect such things via Wires?

yes off course a headerā€¦ and some software changes ā€¦

So, now with header fpr i2c stuff. Theoreticaly even possible to directly solder a Oled display and just let it ā€œhang outā€.

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nice, I donā€™t know ( @kersing) if its even possible to have the spi concentrator AND an I2c display working at the same time, displaying some data

I have this idea to build a LoRaWAN gateway in an old DVD player (those you get for free now :slight_smile: )

should be nice to see if your gateway is working

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Technicaly it isnā€™t any issue to use a SPI and I2C device on the Pi. It should be even no issue to use the BME280 and an OLED display, which are both connected via I2C, at the ā€œsameā€ time on the Pi.

Using SPI and I2C on an RPi should not be a problem. However I did not plan for I2C devices in my design and the adapter PCBs have been ordered. Last status: PCBs are in production at the factory.

My gateways are in closed steel enclosures so displays and additional leds etc make no sense. For temperature monitoring Iā€™m using the RPi CPU core temperature sensor. The CPU is the part that gets hottest (in my experience) so when its temperature is alright all other parts should be fine.

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Totally agree, I personally never found a use for temp sensors on the gateway because I rely on the RPi CPU core temp, but some people like it, so as long as itā€™s optional to connect the BME280, itā€™s perfect.

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So, this board also supports OTAA nodes, right? I need that since my single_packet_fwd doesnā€™t work like that. I need OTAA.