The Things Gateway Design

As requested by a few members (@bluejedi) on this forum please find below the design of The Things Gateway. Let us know any questions in below.


(Questions on the status and progress can be found in this topic. What is the status of the TTN Gateway?)

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WiFi and BLE 2.4Ghz with separate PCB antennas on a single deviceā€¦ raises some warnings.
Is there proper co-existence protocol between the two or is it a ā€œsend and hope for the bestā€ arrangement?

I also wonder what are the plans for the ATECC508A because it has public key Elliptic Curve crypto.

What exactly are the SD card and the cryptographic chip for?

I noticed that most of the parts are Industrial temp. Is / was this a design goal?

@jmarcelino/ @Epyon, TTN GW designer here :slight_smile: Your concerns are valid and complicate the cert process. A co-existence protocol can be implemented if it is deemed necessary.

The ATECC508A will be activated later to provide an additional layer of security ( since firmware over the air updates are difficult/wasteful/impossible with LoRaWAN). Updating physical hardware over the air is still difficult in these days and ages therefore we included it already :wink:

@Epyon, the SD card is there as a bullet proof method of updating the firmware of the Gateway. For the not so faint of heart it is even possible to host a website on it :wink:

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@mated1, Where we had the option/room to upgrade to industrial spec we went for it :innocent:

Thanks for the answer. I do hope itā€™s not for encrypting the firmware though, which should be frowned upon in something claiming to be open source :smirk: .

What will the antenna type and gain used for certification be? A regular whip?

@Epyon, donā€™t worry about that, we are also makers in heart & spirit :wink:

The antenna delivered with the gateway will be a regular whip indeed.

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The design document is just a block diagram, very much the same as one that was released months agoā€¦

When will we see a full design package, Hardware? Software??

With the product delayed by many months now, you should of had lots and lots of time to consider what form of open license to useā€¦ why are you waiting for the last hour for this???

also: the US FCC certification was given on 3 Mar 2017, when will you ship USA units??? as they should not be in the RED certification delay that you are waiting for?

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what are the (legal) consumer guarantees of the ā€˜onlineā€™ products from TTN ?

I searched but couldnā€™t find it

We are working on them as well. As we are bringing out the products officially there will be a whole booklet with stuff our lawyers make us tell you :slight_smile:

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We added some of the specs to the bare boards.

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Wow seriously thereā€™s another PIC micro (PIC24) on the gateway card?! I wonder whatā€™s that for, isnā€™t the PIC32 enough?

I really hope Microchip is paying you for the product placement as this design doesnā€™t seem in any way efficient :slight_smile:

Also hope you solder the missing Bluetooth module on that last photoā€¦ or maybe we can replace it with something better :wink:

I think PIC24 runs the lora gateway and PIC32 runs the packet forwarder.

The same separation as used in lattest https://github.com/Lora-net/picoGW_mcu both MCUs conected by a UART or USB, this time interface delays are not as critical as SPI between SX130x and lora-gateway

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Interesting point, thank you @nestorayuso. I see the PIC24FJ128GB204 supports USB so maybe - just maybe - the gateway module will work independently.

The PIC24 on the gateway module is there for house-keeping and as a wrapper around the SX1301, making it a certifiable module. It also provides the USB interface, but initially only UART is enabled. But its not a packet forwarder - the PIC32 handles that.

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What kind of OS is running on the PIC32?

Check the sources: https://github.com/TheThingsProducts/gateway (FreeRTOS)