Have you considered logging an issue at the BasicStation repo on github? That is the place the Semtech developers ‘hang out’, this is the TTN forum which is less focused on building packet forwarder software and more on the TTN network and its use.
For the picoGW you will need the appropriate HAL layer, I doubt it is included in the build for BasicStation. However the sources are available on github so it might just be a matter of placing the files in the right location and running a build. (Although it is rarely that simple to build software for OpenWRT in my experience)
Is this hardware from Semtech? Because my google search on picoGW and Semtech only shows a USB stick like device, not PCI card.
That’s correct, it is a concentrator card attached via the USB interface of a miniPCI-E slot, Semtech sell these as SX1308P868GW and there are other manufacturers of the same design (e.g. n-fuse). The card contains a USB to SPI interface controller, enumerating as ttyACM0.
Apparently my expectations about this product were false, and it is just a legacy Demo product that Semtec is no longer willing to support except for their legacy packet forwarder; however I wish they would at least state this on their product page.
While I am aware that I’m currently relying on the work of volunteers in order to operate this gateway, I had opened an issue regarding the GPS function in the lora-feed repo, but will also consider to do so in the upstream basicstation repo.
In the end, should I expect to see any severe disadvantages on TTN when running the gateway with the legacy packet forwarder instead of basicstation? Especially, I wonder if class B would be working this way.
You didn’t to notice TTN does not support Class B at all in V2 of the network? V3 should have Class B (not sure if it is implemented at this time but I’ve seen it on the roadmap) but there is no date when the community network switches to V3. So no Class B at the moment.