How do I know a gateway is operational?

21

Parked at the Clifton Park and Ride - still no hits.
Definitely going to have to try a local receiver test back in Leicester.
Tony

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22

The Lenton GW isnt high enough to catch once you come down from the rememberance way hill (around NTU) and down towards the ring road…as you come round the ring road and past the car show rooms and the bowling alley you get good coverage esp as you come off clifton blvd onto the A6005 in towards the town center past the QMC (on your left)

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23

Hi Jeff

Thanks for your advice. I’m back home now, and with so many possible unknowns, I think it is best if I try and make a receiver using a Hope RFM95.
If I can show it is working before you shut down the gateway, I’ll take another trip your way. I’m in an Ioniq electric car, so miles cost virtually nothing.

Tony

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24

Ok, as no traffic I assumed it was a fail. In your shoes I would rather start with a known quantity like the microbit + rak811 module ( I have used many of these) with proven ref design than start a roll your own and potentially having to debug both rf & library issues (lmic based & on which controller? ) … as well as a diy antenna! Have you tested/tuned & optimised the vswr for that unit?

Rather than clog the forum thread PM me to continue as and when you go back again. Let me know by PM your post code and I will look at if a potential site to loan you one of my community GW’s…

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25

Ah, missed that bit of thread. When parked up you would seen it is carved out of the south side of hill top… wrong side of the hill and screened from gw’s in town! If you look at approx location on map above that was a small lane along side other side of remembrance way… am looking at how I can get a GW around area of that hill… :slight_smile:

26

While the application’s and device’s Data pages in TTN Console are nice, they often just do not work for me when I have one open. So, just to be sure you’re not running into problems with TTN Console not updating the Data page (even though you have it open):

You can simulate an uplink to test that.

Lacking the above:

  • Keep an eye on the device’s Status (click its value, if any, to see an exact date; for OTAA devices this will also be changed if an OTAA Join Request was received and accepted, even if the device did not receive the Join Accept), and Frames up counter.

Also, did you try a low data rate (high SF)?

27

Hi Arjan

Thanks for the extra info on MQTT.

And Jeff - I’ve just realised I was reading your map wrong - it’s the distance measurement line - I thought your gateway was at ‘0 km’, so I initially parked in the small lane opposite Green Lane. But your gateway is at 4.25 km - not being familiar with the area I didn’t pick up ‘100m from QMC’. So I turned round the roundabout after Clifton Campus and headed back south - west, stopping at the Park and Ride for a few minutes. Now I understand, I will probably try again next week.

Tony

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It happens! It’s the Lenton GW in Post Code N7 area.
https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/community/nottingham/

29

Hi Jeff

That map of the Nottingham gateways shows I could have been picked up while driving on Remembrance Way by the Gotham gateway.

Tony

30

I doubt it as 90% of Remembrance Way, along with the Park n Ride are masked by the local topology and specifically Gotham Hill. And that assumes map placement is accurate as users often dither exact GPS location on Map for security reasons (I do for most by anything from 20-200m)

image

31

@Jeff-UK If you provide in DM the coordinates I can produce a profile or propagation calculation

32

This is working reliably for me, as long as you stick to the Arduino & library release versions that I state, otherwise all bets are off!

33

Hi Jeff

I haven’t had time yet to build my own receiver, so I am going to take a trip now to your gateway so I can catch it before you shut it down. Should be there a bit before midday. I have also added a button that gives larger spreading factor, so I will try that as well, so it would be interesting to see if the signal strength changes. I’ll approach Nottingham along the A453 with SF12, and change when I have got near your gateway.
Tony

34

Been out for a couple of hours but back nw and can see from GW Console logs that you had some success! Have done screen grabs and snapshot some log files from the GW that I will compile and send to you by seperate message - basically I could see from Count 105 @ ~12:23pm through to Count 18 @ ~13:03 pm with various Count resets and a number of downlinks, uplinks were across SF9, 8 & 7 :slight_smile:

Earlier messages were truncated so I could not see those by the time I got back to office but clearly you had success joining through my GW or one of the others you may have passed along the way…

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35

Hi Jeff

I was getting hits on my console from 12:23, from near to you, with SF12, and I changed to SF7 at 12:31. Then I parked in the car park where I believe you are located. No more hits, so I changed back to SF12 at 12:55. Still no hits, so I drove home, stopping at the Park and Ride for a few minutes. I got a screen grab of the first couple of hits - I realise if I had scrolled right, I should have been able to see the lat and long, but didn’t realise at the time. I saw more hits, but didn’t screen grab. It will be interesting to see yours.
console1

Tony

36

Thanks Nick - I’ll be investigating the code this week.
Tony

37

Luckily you enabled the Data Storage Integration, and have the MQTT output. :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:

You could still type the payload you see into the test field of your application’s Payload Format decoder, for the ones on the screenshot.

38

Where will I find the MQTT output? And unfortunately, I cleared the screen of the data.
Tony

39

Thou shall click the links. :wink:

But there are two payloads in that screenshot, if you want to know their coordinates.

40

@tony1tf And there are another 5 shown in the screen grabs I just PM’d you. I need to get a word doc containing other stuff over somehow…