Hi. I am currently developing a cold chain monitoring project and got a Dragino LHT-52, and currently I have a developer gateway for testing which is connected to TTN community edition cloud and I used Data cake to send an alert (EMAIL). I am planning to buy an Indoor gateway. Right, now I wanted to keep it simple, and update alert system may be based on MQTT or something else later. So, I am a bit confused to choose a gateway.
The requirements are
1)Planning to place End device in a closed Indoor place may be maximum of 50 meters(from the place where gateway can be placed), separated by walls. (Planning to connect 10 end devices to gateway)
some end devices might be just few meters(1-5) away from the gateway
I am new to LoRaWAN, so the plan is to develop the basic prototype and start using, and then explore different features which might better suit this kind of application. In the end, I want to depend less on cloud providers (subscriptions) and customize it accordingly.
If you don’t want to rely on cloud providers you can use The Things Stack installed and maintained (by yourself) on your on hardware combined with (almost) any gateway.
If you decide to go for another solution you need to find a forum that isn’t sponsored by The Things Industries…
Apart from possible LoRaWAN network stacks installed locally on the gateway most gateways are pretty much the same. And those locally installed stacks are not a subject we discuss on the TTI sponsored forum,
I’m sure @rish1 will be happy to help you with your commercial project once it has more than a couple of test devices on it.
Gateways merely convert radio waves in to TCP/IP packets and have little to do with how you alert the user. If you want to put radio devices in to metal boxes of any size, you’ll need to spend some time running tests of antenna placement. And don’t assume the gateway hardware is happy at cold store temperatures - an indoor gateway is likely to have all sorts of issues with condensation etc - you may need to look at an IP rated / outdoor gateway.
Perhaps you should try a test install of TTS OS and then figure out how to provide 24/7 + holiday cover for support and then look at the value for money that a cloud subscription offers you.
Thanks for the suggestion. I will look into it. But the gateway is not supposed to be placed in a cold room. Only the end devices are to be placed inside the coolers/freezers. So, then I shouldn’t worry much about the gateway, I guess.
I am planning to attach a probe and just place the probe inside the cooler and leave the end device outside. The distance from the end device to gateways might be around 5–50 meters approximately and covered by wall or doors. (Suitable Place for gateway not finalized still)
I am not sure about other options to place an end device. I have to test and explore.
The application is for Indoor restaurant environment!
we have at 4 different sites 40 nodes inside fridges some are walkins and others small upright all on tti
of the 40 there are 5 that don’t work that reliably as it is the fridge and a concrete wall to contend with
the rf escapes via the door seals
so caution on thinking the inside work 100%
at 5 with nothing between the gateway and node you are most likely going the have issues with rssi this is not wifi this is a issue with everyone thinking the node and gateway can be on the same table forum full of this
So, distance between gateway and end device should be greater than 5 metres? The distance between gateway and end device is still not decided. I am going to test it and see. There should be something in between, even it’s placed closer.
How did you place the end device inside the fridge? You have just placed the probe inside and placed the device outside?
what if the cooler is covered by a steel like this.
You have mentioned there are 5 that don’t work reliable. Is it because of the enclosure?
some are just laying on a shelf in the fridge/cooler others are mounted with magnets
either steel or aluminum covered double walled thermal insulation bodies rf escapes via the rubber door seals
the coolers double walled bodies are the first part and then two concrete walls we are planning to install a new gateway closer to these next month that will fix the issues
you need to expect some issues if you do it the way we did
you can not expect to get any range out of your nodes from inside the cooler
if you only install the probe into the cooler and the rf outside you will get better range
Hi, I use about 20 gateways of rak wirelles.
The 7258 and 7268 and the 7249 and 7289.
The outdoor gateways are now about 3 years in service and never broke down yet.
With WisDM, the cloud management platform of RAK Wireless you will get alerted if a gateway goes down.
Best
Marc
For a professional product, you don’t want to forget about remote monitoring, management and firmware upgrades. Our n-fuse indoor LoRaWAN Gateway (PoE enabled Raspberry Pi based LoRaWAN® Gateway - n-fuse) is already deployed at large scale AND we offer a free FW image with Mender.io integration AND if you want the required infrastructure at a small fee with our managed GW service (SaaS Offerings ‒ n-fuse).
