Introduction

This week we received at EBV our first Laird Sentrius Lora Gateway at the office. Time for a first test to replace our RasPi based TTN gateway that frequently stalls. (Probably due to the SD-card unreliability).
As true Hardware-freaks we first opened the case to take a look inside :)

The Sentrius board is a quite simple setup, containing a base board with power and Ethernet interface, stacked with just 2 modules: A Linux-Based Wifi/bluetooth module (WB50NBT) with Atmel Cortex-A5, combined with a Lora-M2 module (RG186-M2). This is the concentrator-card containing the famous Semtech SX1301 and SX1257 radio chips. Three antennas are connected via u.fl-connectors to the external casing.
The Sentrius supports Dualband Wifi, Bluetooth 4.0 (BT and classic), LoraWan and Ethernet, and comes with full packet forwarder software with a set of defaults for well-known LoraWan Network providers, (including TTN - The Things Network).

Out of the box, the gateway is connected via the Ethernet port to your internet-available network. Like common gateways and routers, the GUI interface works via an HTTP connection. Setting up the gateway for TTN is a matter of 10-15 minutes using the presets. In advanced mode its possible to tune the gateway for other networks – public or private. With additional development on the linux-platform, it should be possible to add multi-packet forwarders for any type of network – this is to be continued.

The gateway is now 24/7 operational, and it’s worth mentioning that the system is not running very hot (what we saw with our RasPi solution with a MultiTech concentrator it would burn your fingers!)

Gateway costs a 245Eu and the M2-concentrator module only will be available well below 100Eu by end-Q3.
Interest? – drop me a mail