The team at The Things Network and Tweetonig is investigating this since last night. Thanks for reporting and we will open DMs with all of you to help us reproduce the problems.
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We have started DM threads with each person experiencing difficulties. And are exploring what went wrong.
We welcome any reports.
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ok Jac. tnx
Answers to some of the frequently asked questions:
Q. How do I get started with The Things Gateway?
A. Getting started with The Things Gateway is a 3 step process:
- First step - Plug the gateway into a power outlet
- Second step - Go to the website (ttn.fyi/activate)
- Third step - Follow the instructions on the website
Q. How can I reset my gateway?
A.
- Pressing the button shortly while powered on restarts the gateway.
- Holding the button for 2 seconds while powered on it erased the WiFi settings.
- Holding the button for 5 seconds while powered on it erases the WiFi settings and activation settings.
- Holding the button while powering on it will erase the full serial flash
The reset button is indicated with the text: Mode
Q. The second time I power my Gateway it takes a time to start up, why?
A. On power cycle and every 24 hours it checks for new firmware. If the latest firmware is not downloaded yet it will download the new image and perform are reboot in order to install the image. This will take a few minutes. The process is indicated by a flashing power LED. Power cycling during this process is not dangerous, but will be restarted once started up again. Please be patient.
Q. My gateway stays in AP mode, what do I do?
A. This behaviour occurs when there is a hick up in the wifi connection of the gateway. When this happens, your gateway will turn into an AP and devices you used to set up the gateway can connect to it (your laptop or phone). To avoid this issue, you should ‘forget’ the wifi AP of the gateway on your phone/laptop.
Q. I want to get in-depth insight in what my gateway is doing, is that possible?
A. The gateway has a UART port on which it prints debug messages. To see these messages you need to connect a device between the gateway and your computer that can read out a UART (e.g. an FTDI cable/board).
Connect UART-interface device to your computer and the RX line to the RX pin. Start terminal to UART with 115200@8N1.
Red = UART RX, brown = GND
Example connection FTDI:
Q. How do I reset the gateway?
A. To find the reset button on the gateway, open the (white) lid on the gateway carefully and find the red color button on the PCB:
- Pressing the button shortly while powered on restarts the gateway.
- Holding the button for 2 seconds while powered on it erased the WiFi settings.
- Holding the button for 5 seconds while powered on it erases the WiFi settings and activation settings.
- Holding the button while powering on it will erase the full serial flash
Q. What does the LED light on the gateway indicate?
A. If in the process of activating the gateway, it takes too long then probably something went wrong. Check the LED’s on the gateway to find out what is going on.
| LED 1 | LED 2 | LED 3 | LED 4 | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| On | Slowly blinking | Connecting to the internet | ||
| On | Fast blinking | Could not connect to the internet | ||
| On | On | Slowly blinking | Still activating | |
| On | On | Fast blinking | Could not activate (restart activation from step 1) | |
| On | On | On | Activated | |
| On | On | On | On | Connected to the router |
LED 5 shows the gateway’s uplink/downlink activity.
Q. What if I take the gateway to a different location, do I have setup the configuration again?
A. Once you configure the gateway, the settings get locked so in case you move to a different location you will have to do the activation again. Goto ttn.fyi/activate and at Step 1, you can select your gateway from the list and configure them.
Q. How do I connect to the WiFi access point of the gateway?
A. After going to ttn.fyi/activate and registering your gateway, you will have to connect to the WiFi of the gateway and then connect to your home/office network. Connect to the gateways WiFi access point ‘Things-Gateway-XXXX’ using the password thethings.
Q. How can I check if the gateway is working or not?
A. To check the status of the gateway, goto the console as directed afterwards in the activation process . Under the gateway section (https://console.thethingsnetwork.org/gateways), you can see the status. If you have any device connected, you can check it under the ‘traffic’ section.
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Hi,
we’ve received a TTN Gateway (labelled backer edition) from Farnell the other day.
Here are some findings after the (stumbling) activaton process:
The unit is basically within a boot loop. Every few minutes a reboot is performed w/o any visible reason. It is not following some constant interval.
Thanks to the designed UART footprint and populated header (great!) a bit of an insight is possible to get and prodive to this discussion. I refuse to post a complete boot log here due to keys and IDs in that log.
What seems a bit odd is that albeit in December already, the firmware of that gateway dates June 2017, seems to be rather old.
**************************
* The Things Network *
* G A T E W A Y *
**************************
Firmware name: AmazingAckermann, type: 0, version: 1.0.0, commit: 917719b9, timestamp: 1498499973
Bootloader revision: 1, commit: 7167873a, timestamp: 1496411298
Build time: Jun 26 2017 19:59:53
A bit further down the log it states this:
FIRM: Starting download
FIRM: available bytes: 79
FIRM: (Downloaded FOTA key) xx xx xx xx xx .. .. ..
FIRM: (Stored FOTA key) xx xx xx .. .. ..
FIRM: Firmware is already downloaded
MAIN: No new firmware available
I’d have thought that a vibrant development process would’ve had more output over the course of six months. So I am inclined to assume that the updater itself might be broken/buggy. Is that a known bug?
There also is a USB Micro B connector populated right next to the Mode button. Is it possible to use this port for firmware updates? If not, what is it good for? The pcb image, embedded by @rish a few post before, isn’t taking any notice of it, unfortunately.
Is anyone here with helpful suggestions?
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I found that connecting a live ethernetcable breaks the update loop after a couple of minutes, in my case then it basicly keeps trying to activate which for some reason does not work, i will start reading the uart tomorrow and hope to understand more.
WiFi setup did not work all together, so all of my tests and baby steps were only possible with an ethernet cable plugged in. And the serial cable of course.
@Leondegeling What firmware release does your gateway have? Is there a newer one around than the v1.0.0 in my box? I stick with the idea that since June there should be a more recent one.
Bootloader:
r1-7167873a (2017-06-02T13:48:18Z)
Firmware:
v1.0.0-917719b9 (2017-06-26T17:59:33Z)
I found the gateway does connect to the wifi. If you type the ip-address of the gateway into your browser (the webui of your accesspoint will show you the ip) you get to a screen that lets you choose the ssid and enter a password, this will enable wifi and get you out of the boot-loop.
Why would there be? During the last few months certification and production were focus, the firmware needed to be done before to enable those two.
I don’t wan’t to meddle with this topic as the gateway I ordered is still on the go, but isn’t it time that the source code of the firmware and the full schematics of the hardware are released? Looking through the content of the topics, I am absolutely sure that there are a lot of people in the forum with experience in embedded programming, even with Microchip’s Harmony framework. And these people would immediately and happily help in sorting out these initial bugs.
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New question about frequencies supported …
I’m waiting with anticipation to get my EU868 Kickstarter and will use it initially in EU, but will I be able to later configure it for India (IN865) channel plan?
(Same idea applies for the NA915 gateway and using in AU915 or AS923 regions)
Would this modification be something possible in the existing configuration setup, or would need to get in to the source code??
Thanks in advance
@JDP I don’t have the schematics of the gateway, but most probably the radio front-end contains a SAW filter. If I remember well, it was announced that the TTN Gateway’s radio card is manufactured by Microchip, which means that its schematic is most probably very close to that of Microchip’s own gateway: http://ww1.microchip.com/downloads/en/DeviceDoc/40001827A.pdf, and that radio card contains a SAW filter. SAW (surface acoustic wave) filters are manufactured (and tuned) for a certain - very narrow - frequency band. This means that the radio front-end is manufactured for a certain region and cannot be changed by programming.
…but when buying one, the only choice one gets is 868 MHz or 915 MHz. I’d assume no additional hardware changes are made based on the delivery address. So within 868 MHz, I’d assume it’s just configuration that distinguishes between, e.g., EU868 and IN865? (And likewise AU915 and AS923 for the 915 MHz gateway.)
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@arjanvanb You are absolutely right. According to the schematics, the Microchip gateway uses either a TA0547A or a TA1561A SAW filter. The former has a center frequency of 867.5 MHz, while the later 915 MHz. Both have a relatively high bandwidth (860 MHz to 867 MHz for the TA0547A and 902 MHz to 928 MHz for the TA1561A) meaning that within these bandwidths, everything is possible… If anyone is interested, the specifications for the SAW filters are online: https://www.taisaw.com/upload/product/TA0547A%20_Rev.1.0_.pdf and https://www.taisaw.com/upload/product/TA1561A%20_Rev.1.0_.pdf
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@JDP Now I see, I misinterpreted your post! Sorry for the dumb reply, you are right, most probably you could do the modifications in the source code. Sorry again!
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It seems that the registration process of the TTN Gateways makes a difference in the public visibility. I checked “Recumbent Travellings” gateway and see that instead of eui there is an alias. I would also prefer to hide (or obfuscate) the eui. This would help changing Hardware with same name. 
The TTN protocol does not use the EUI, it uses the gateway (short) name in stead. When using the semtech protocol you will still be using (and showing) the EUI.
If you ‘upgrade’ your packet forwarder to either the TTN packet forwarder or to MP forwarder you’ll be using the names as it uses the TTN protocol.
My ttn-gateway is still not working and the only use for it I found so far is to compliment the christmas decorations since the flashing green leds fit pretty well in the christmastree. I captured a lot of uart logging but since there is no documentation or sourcecode available at this point it’is hard to see what wrong. However I see a pattern. After a couple of initial startups the gateway gets in a loop where it keeps booting, but just before it reboots I see the following in the log:
CNFG: Configuring LoRa module
LORA: Changing state from 2 to 4
LORA: Starting reconfiguration
Does anyone here know what this means and if rebooting is normal at this point?
The Reboot reason is : 0x53 is there someone that has a list of reboot reasons. (would be a nice list for the faq)
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