Working with the guys over at balena<\/a> comes with some perks - including the peer pressure of getting into new technologies and trying them out. My go-to person this time was balena Developer Advocate Marc Pous<\/a> - who is not only no stranger to soldering - but also deeply rooted in the LoRaWAN<\/a> field (and he is also doing balenaHub projects for LoRaWAN applications 1<\/a>, 2<\/a>).<\/p>\n\n\n I heared about LoRaWAN a while back, when I was working with Sigfox<\/a> - but never really gave it a try, other than trying to run a basestation for a certain satellite using LoRa for its communication. <\/p>\n\n\n This changed through Marcs constant LoRa presentations and work - I just gave in and wanted to try it. I had already three projects at hand: One was getting some BME280s into a network (because due to 2.4 GHz spectrum hell induced by too many neighbours with too many WiFi APs cranked to 11 using WiFi with ESP8266 did not work anymore...). This project would be the \"first hello-world\" to maybe be allowed to deploy a network in my company to care for our sensors - and lastly, strapping LoRa technology to a rocket and see whether we can muster the about 250 km+ downrange.<\/p>\n\n\n But things start small, so I wanted to get into the field with best-in-class technology - and the latest available products (especially thinking about ultra-long communications like on my last usecase). Luckily, the new Semtech SX1303<\/a> came to market 8 months ago and RAKwireless decided to make their first concentrator on its base, the RAKwireless Wislink RAK5146<\/a> - and I wanted to be an \"early adopter\".<\/p>\n\n\n If I am getting into a new product, I am used to finding a certain amount of good documentation, software and support. I must admit that I was really spoiled with my latest endeavors using Paul Stoffregens excellent Teensy series<\/a> (loyal customer since Teensy 2.0\/2010 ;)), some new STM32s and also NVIDIAs Jetson lineup<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n So I went into this whole project with wrong expectations, as RAKwireless had made a ton of useful stuff available already for their older systems like the RAK2287<\/a> - and I thought everything would be in place for the new system as well, which was wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n I started the project more than a month ago and at that time not even a real firmware was available. The only project I found was this Github Repo<\/a> - which could not even install for my RAK5146 USB because someone forgot the chmod +x on the install script, which gave a bad first impression regarding how tested this official project would be - and I was not disappointed, as I had to try to figure out how to get it working with TTN - because the important step (after the installation was done) to changing the server address in the configuration file - was not included in the setup instructions, so my gateway never connected.<\/p>\n\n\n Also, no RPi Hat was available - which brought me into looking for own solutions, which I found in an USB WWAN adapter card to be stacked onto the RPi.<\/p>\n\n\n A last thing which was confusing, especially with trying to figure out how to connect everything were the Pinout and Blockdiagram. I remind you, there are 6 different configurations of the RAK5146:<\/p>\n\n\n Both the Blockdiagram <\/a>and Pinout <\/a>for all these variations were handled in one graphic. While one could handle the block diagram, the pinout is just confusing. Which Pins are actually on the card using the USB version with LBT and GPS? What is going on with the SPI pins? Are they not even routed?<\/p>\n\n\n I tried to use my new TTNv3 gateway with Heltec Cubecells - and while I got it working, there was just unreliable data transmission and huge packet loss.<\/p>\n\n\n I must admit, I went to this project with wrong expectations - because I saw the RAK5146 now freely available on RAKwireless shop - thinking it should be another product like the RAK2287 - but that was wrong. It seems to be a product which is firstly marketed towards huge OEM customers - and not for the hackers at heart.<\/p>\n\n\n To try to get this issues resolved, I wrote a bunch of PRs and Issues on the Github repo and documented my findings on balenas Forum<\/a>. Luckily, those comments did not fall onto deaf ears and the situation improved:<\/p>\n\n\n RAKwireless worked in enhancing the documentation of the RAK5146 - but sadly the Blockdiagram and Pinout is still in the same state. Also, no quickstart guide was added.<\/p>\n\n\n Thanks to Taylor<\/a> there is now a firmware package made available, which can be downloaded from the RAK5146 page<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n Regarding the documentation on using it, this is not available yet. Please stick to the RAK2287 Quickstart guide<\/a>. You can set it up as \"RAK Gateway LoRa Concentrator\" for TTN like shown there - but need to edit the packet-forwarder config afterwards (see the main menu of gateway-config) and replace the \"server_address\": \"router.us.thethings.network\" with your things network router (e.g. eu1.cloud.thethings.network in Europe TTNv3). You should then restart the Gateway \/ Forwarded. In adding it to the TTNv3 stack, the Quickstart guide is a bit outdated. You can still find out the EUI of your gateway using gateway-version and use this for adding it to TTNv3, but please be careful not to choose the frequency plan \"Europe 863-870 MHz (SF9 for RX2 - recommended)\" - but the RX2 SF12 option to improve the signal quality.<\/p>\n\n\n I still have problems with bad performance - and the helpful Jose Marcelino<\/a> decided to send me a RPi Hat for switching out my contraption, which should improve quality. However, after waiting a month I have not yet received this Hat yet and could therefore not test.<\/p>\n\n\nWrong expectations<\/h2>\n\n\n
Moving forwards<\/h2>\n\n\n