I am brand new and I would need your help please.
I have no gateway, cause the TTN map is showing some gateways near me (only few hundred meters) here in Linz (Europe, Austria).
So I bought a Dragino LDS02, added an application and added an end device. BUT is this all correct??
Cause now I am waiting nearly an hour and the TTN Console - “Live Data” still does not show anything.
I am unsure if I have choosen the correct firmware version, cause it is mentioned nowhere on my device and also not on the papers comingwith it. But as it says “Join Mode: Over The Air Activation”, I thought FW 1.5 must be the correct.
I am also unsure about the “Profile (Region)” and “Frequency plan” which is correct for my region.
There are no obvious errors in the registration data, as far as I can see.
I would check for simple physical stuff at this point, like: is the battery full, is there still a plastic battery tab you need to pull to activate the battery, does this thing have a LED that lights when it is sending? Perhaps you need
Having gateway logs helps to determine if it’s sending anything at all, and if the radio signal is reaching the gateway.
Hello, sorry, I don’t have a gateway, cause the map is showing 7 different gateways which are covering my location.
So I thought I could save money and won’t need one.
Could you please suggest a cheap gateway for me, which is working out of the box and could help me with my tests?
Batteries are full. When inserting them, LED is blinking red, blue green, then off and sometimes green. Seems that is ok, but I have no manual which would confirm this for my Dragino LDS02.
Could it be, that I just have to wait a few more hours/days because of the fair use policy? I have completely free registration and did not pay anything and did not add a gateway, could this be a problem?
Coverage can be tricky - if you can give us your general location we can look at the maps to see what the reality might be.
A TTIG - The Things Indoor Gateway. Most people starting out end up with at least one gateway.
Nope, nothing like that, it is all free, no catches, the FUP is about how much air time you use each day - up to 30 seconds - so as long as you aren’t sending uplinks less than every few minutes you are OK
The red dot is my location. I live about 30 meters above the ground and have large windows (old models, simply glazed, not metallized) to east, south and west and should therefore even have sight contact with some gateways:
Or do you know a cheaper model?
In the future the door sensor should operate 8 floors below me. Do you thank that “indoor” gateway is strong enough to receive the signal of the sensor?
I had one other tought: Do you think that I could get some data if I put my Dragino LDS02 into a backpack and cycle through the town near to the gateway locations? Will I just have to be near that location with the sensor, or will I have to do anything like open/close the door sensor or replace batteries, when I am near a gateway?
So many variables. But I’d be surprised if it couldn’t hear a device 8 floors down excepting the one you have has a tiny antenna on it and if it’s the original version with the coin cells, it will use up it’s battery quickly if it has to use a lower data rate (ie, more time on air).
No. If you do some research (on the forum for instance) you’ll find a number of ways of making gateways but if you want a “sure thing” aka a definitely working gateway, the TTIG is the least expensive one around. But just because it works well doesn’t mean it can hear every device in every position, no gateway can be sure of doing that. There is only one way to find out.
Probably
I’ll leave you to read the comprehensive product documentation on the best way to initialise that particularly device from that particular manufacturer. But at minimum I wouldn’t expect it to be transmitting just when doing nothing.
The problem is, that I can’t find a product documentation for the Dragino LDS02.
But anyway, I will try it with a TTIG soon.
When I use my own TTIG and add it to TTN, will I then still be limitted to fair use, or will then more than 10 messages per day be allowed?
The allowed number of messages depends upon several factors, fundamentally it’s the length of the message (in milliseconds), but if you have a better link to the gateway, it uses a higher data rate, making the airtime lower for a given message. If you have a poor link (further away or more interference) then a lower data rate is used, taking more time. You’ll need some information from the manufacturer, but as a starting place I’d guess that the radio messages are about 5 bytes long (payload, there are also other overhead/addressing bytes). Run this through the airtime calculator tool to find how long each message lasts with each of the bandwidths and spreading factors and that will give you an upper and lower bound for the fair use calculation.
Thanks for all your help, after a bike tour with stops in 3 bars near the displayed gateway positions, I finally saw live data from my sensor on the last stop. I walked around in the town like a total nerd with the sensor, but it paid off to know what’s going on
Yup, that is quite a problem, but I see that it’s been solved for you.
Almost all of LoRaWAN will be an ongoing nightmare without prior research & more reading around the topic than you can imagine. If it was Lego, the bricks would only fit together based on both the colour, shape & number of bumps on the top!
Thanks!
One question regarding the coverage map: Are this gateways not monitored, if they are really online?
Cause today I think 2 were really not available.
Depends, which gateway map were you using? Some are based purely on registration, some on activity via a mapper device, the TTS service is free, the gateways are individually owned, so YMMV.
But strange is, that yesterday directly at position 1 I did not see any data, and at position 2 it worked as it should. Position 3 gateway like shown on TTN community map is completely missing:
You need to understand what TTN Mapper is, possibly by reading the instructions so you can see how it gathers its data. In short, it’s created by people doing mapping, so only those gateways that have been heard by a device that is doing the mapping appear on that map.
And the TTN map is based on what people tell it in the database - so I could set any one of my gateways to be in a position that is nothing related to the real world - like the top of Everest for instance.
TTN Mapper is much much harder to fake, but even that is possible if you know how.
Reality is not what it seems, you need to choose the Red or the Blue pill to continue …
Typically within 30 mins to 30 hrs of go live (typically 8-10hrs) depending on when map data next scraped, typically within 1hr and 12 hrs from when scraped over to TTN Mapper from prior observation. TTN Mapper will start to show valid (see documentation) mapping data over night from time of capture. If data does not appear for your device use advanced map option and enter your nodes Id & data range as data not good enough for general display may still be captured and presented in a ‘personal’ map.
