Arrived package and unboxing

I purchased my gateway kit in AlliExpress (868 Mhz - Europe).

The exact kit I have is this :

Now they have added a TF card and a casing :

Here are the pictures of the package I received and everything inside it :

Included papers/schematics :

Don't forget step 9 !!

After assembling, you end up with this:

Time for the OS and software !

Making RasPi 3 headless

Now we are ready to prepare the RasPi to be headless (no monitor/input device, access through SSH).

Since we will be using the RasPi only for the gateway (recommended), we will download Raspbian Lite (no desktop, Ubuntu server like).

I am on Ubuntu 16.04.3. If you are using Windows, the steps are the same but you have to be careful with creating files and editing stuff as they won't be readable by Raspbian (Windows --> Linux text issue).

We download the latest Raspbian Lite (Download latest Raspbian) and we use Etcher by Resin.io (Download latest Etcher) to prepare the SD card.

Now that we have our OS on SD we want 2 things : enable SSH to remotely connect to the gateway and make RasPi automatically connect to already known WiFi (e.g. our house's).

Enable SSH

The SD card has two partitions. We go to partition

/boot

and we create an empty file with name

ssh

Just that : no extension and empty. This will tell Raspbian, on first boot, to enable ssh.

Auto-connect to WiFi

We need to create one file and edit another.

We go to partition

/boot

and we create an empty file with name

wpa_supplicant.conf

We open it and we write :

network={
    ssid="_WIFI ssid_"
    psk="_WIFI password_"
    key_mgmt=WPA-PSK
}

We replace with our ssid and password, save and close.

Now we need to sudo edit another file, on the other partition.

We sudo edit the file

/etc/network/interfaces

and at the end of the file we add :

auto wlan0

iface lo inet loopback
iface eth0 inet dhcp

allow-hotplug wlan0
iface wlan0 inet dhcp
wpa-conf /etc/wpa_supplicant/wpa_supplicant.conf
iface default inet dhcp

This will enable the WiFi to connect to previously defined wireless network and automatically assigned an IP (dhcp, not static)

That's it ! Our RasPi is ready to be deployed headless ! Place the SD card, plug in a USB power supply with 2 amps capability and give it some time (under a minute if all is OK) to boot and connect to the network.

SSH to RasPi for some configuration

Now we are ready to SSH to our RasPi and make some more configurations.

At this point, the only leds that are red on RAK831 are the next :

The lower left is bright but GPIO 3+4 not so much.

First, we must find our RasPi's IP. If your home network is 192.168.1.XXX type, in Linux, we type :

sudo nmap -sP 192.168.1.*

If not installed type :

sudo apt-get install nmap

It will show every host that is up. We are looking for the words "Raspberry Pi". Now we have the IP we need.

Default values for user/password in a fresh install of Raspbian is :

user : pi

password : raspberry

Now we will SSH to RasPi by typing :

ssh -l pi 192.168.1.XXX

where XXX is the IP that you found.

If not installed, type :

sudo apt-get install ssh

Now we will configure the SPI and the SD card.

We type

sudo raspi-config

To enabel SPI we go to

5 Interfacing Options --> P4 SPI and choose Yes

To expand the filesystem on SD card we go to

7 Advanced Options --> A1 Expand Filesystem

Then we select Finish in the main menu and reboot the system

As our RasPi rebooted, our SSH connection was lost, so we connect again.

To check if SPI is enabled we type :

ls /dev/*spi*

Now we are ready for our next step, to install TTN software.

Installing software and registering our gateway to TTN

Let's update, upgrade and install git :

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade && sudo apt-get install git -y

After that we will clone the repository from ttn-zurich (SPI branch) :

git clone https://github.com/ttn-zh/ic880a-gateway.git ~/ic880a-gateway

and we will enter the newly created directory :

cd ic880a-gateway

To continue, the important parts are our Gateway EUI (provided by install script in terminal) and our gateway's GPS coordinates (lat, lng)(provided during our ttn registration).

So, we have a terminal open and also our browser.

We login to our ttn account and we go to Console --> Gateways --> Register gateway

We check the box saying "I'm using the legacy packet forwarder" and we are here :

sudo ./install.sh spi

We stop here and we copy-paste the EUI from terminal to Gateway EUI in registration.

We continue in registration to fill the other blanks and check the correct info.

For me (Greece) it was :

Description --> you name it, (e.g. My new gateway)

Frequency Plan --> Europe 868Mhz

Router --> ttn-router-eu

Now in Location you click on the location of the gateway. In the upper right corner of the map, gateway's coordinates will appear. We will need them for the install script, which is waiting in terminal. Note them somewhere. After we enter all info, it should look like this :

Hit that "Register Gateway" button !!!!!!

We return to terminal and press N to the question "Do you want to use remote settings file?".

Then we write (manually, pasting gives hex I think) the info required. On Latitude and Longitude we enter the coordinates from registration.

The installation ends with this :

RasPi reboots and we notice that the hostname has changed and that, on RAK831, GPIO 3+4 leds light for a while at boot and then are off. And we have a bright red RX led !

Congrats !!!! You now have your RAK831 LoRa Gateway online !

Let's check :

In terminal :

systemctl status ttn-gateway.service

Also :

sudo apt-get install tcpdump

and

sudo tcpdump -AUq port 1700

Also :

sudo tail -f /var/log/syslog

(It logs every few seconds)

In TTN Console :

It checks every 30 seconds.

So, that was it ! Please review this guide and message me if something is wrong or needs change/improvement.

Wow !! Now let's make some LoRa nodes with sensors, deploy them and start testing !

Next step : TTN Mapper !