Connecting to a GW in New Zealand

How to get started
1

Hi

I have been trying for over a week to get my Heltec Lorawan 32 (V2) to connect to a gateway. I did think it could be that I am too far away from the Gateway. Today I drove to just outside a place that shows one on the TTN Gateway Mapper.

I don’t know what to do next. Is there anyone in the Waikato that might be able to help talk me through it?

I have had someone check that I am entering the information from the TTN to the Arduino software and upload it. I didn’t think it was meant to be this hard

Regards

Don

2

For LoRaWAN many moving parts there are. Not FaceBook is this.

Having gateway of own for debugging do savvy developers have.

70km by 54km is Waikato in size, more precise location would needed be.

3

I drove to the gateway in Hamilton.

I was looking at the TTN indoor gateway as an option to do as you suggest. I don’t think anyone sells that unit here in NZ. Do you have a suggestion of an affordable gateway for testing? I did see somewhere that you can make a simple gateway which I think was using the same board I have. I think you could connect it to the TTN but not publicly

Happy to travel closer to a GW. I did check the one in Hamilton and it still seems to be up on the TTN Mapper

4

RAKwireless, Dragino (8 channel only), PyCom as well as the TTIG - Google shopping will make local suggestions plus Amazon.

Single Channel Packet Forwarders actually hamper testing as they can only hear on one of the eight channels the device is expecting.

5

Do I have to configure sub bands for NZ? I use the AU915 frequency?

6

I’m not up on your side of the planet so I couldn’t say. Who ever does answer would benefit from knowing what gateway you ended up with.

Do you have any devices?

7

Hi

I have Heltec Lora 32 v2

8

I don’t know but possibly needed and often forgotten is to hardwire DIO1 with GPIO33 on TTGO boards i think thats also needed on Heltec boards to have Lora functionality’s working.

9

Hi Don,

TTN on AU 915 uses the second group of 8 channels

If you try any of the Heltec examples for your board you need to change the first word of the channels mask from 0x00FF to 0xFF00.

/*LoraWan channelsmask, AU 915 chanels 8 - 15*/ 
uint16_t userChannelsMask[6]={ 0xFF00,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000,0x0000 };

If you get your own gateway it is important to get an 8 channel one. I have a RAK 2245 hat on a Raspberry Pi that works quite well for me…

10

AndyG could you recommend which sketch I should try please?

Also how do I tell if it should be in the HEX or LSB or MSB?

Its not possible I have mucked up the registration to TTN is it?

11

I use the Heltec CubeCell boards. I think for the Lora 32 V2 the LoraWAN examples are a bit different. You have to download the license key for the board to be able to use LoraWAN. I think there is an example that monitors the battery voltage.

The Heltec code normally takes the various TTN keys in MSB format.

It is unlikely that anything is wrong on the TTN side. Just make sure the settings your code match the device values in the TTN console.

12

A couple of things:

  • manage your application/device via the meshed console: https://console.thethings.meshed.com.au/
  • Check out what frequency plan the gateway is on - some are using AS923, not AU915. You need to use the same on your device, or get a gateway that supports AU915.

What library is your sketch using?
For AU915 you might need to configure the use of sub band 1.

13

It looks like in AU the TTN Community will be consolidating around AU915 from the V3 transition, with AS923 left as legacy and looking to ensure AS923 only GWs uplifted to dual mode where possible so may be worthwhile, at this point & before getting too invested in AS923, in NZ that you guys look to do the same. ?