If there is no existing V2 TTN traffic in your area should you deploy V3 TTN gateways

Hi Folks,

Just after some advice. What is the view on deploying V3 Gateways (and nodes) if you have no existing V2 traffic in your area?

I’m in Shannon Town in the West of Ireland and the nearest V2 traffic is in Limerick some 20+ kms away. I have my own V2 Gateway (see attached map) but that only ever sees my V2 test node which I’m planning on retiring.!

It just seems a lot of work to stick with V2 for six months just to have to upgrade everything.

Everything could be as many as 10 gateways and 50 nodes by then along with supporting documentation and backend databases and visualisation tools!

Your thoughts would be welcome as I don’t want to be a bad TTN citizen :slight_smile:

Kind regards,

Tony
image

It’s not very clear what you are implying here. Are you saying you are thinking of deploying 10 gateways and 50 nodes over the next 6 months, along with some dashboards? But the fear of being called out is holding you back?

As I understand it, TTI in Amsterdam have delegated gateway upgrade monitoring to Mr S Claus at 0N, 0W, so it’s rather up to you when you upgrade. As is tradition in Holland, if you are on the naughty list, you get a lump of coal in your shoes on the 15th December.

Hi Descartes,

Thanks for the reply.

Yes. I am saying that.

OK. So is your advice is to only deploy V2 Gateways until told otherwise by TTN? If so, I will do that and just plan for the migration to V3 Gateways when you advise.

I was just hoping the lack of existing V2 traffic in my area would allow me to go straight to V3 with the ten gateways and still have a coal free Xmas :slight_smile:

Kind regards,

Tony

General advice is if you have a GW on V2 keep it there for now, if you are deploying new kit then, unless specifically needed to extend V2 coverage for existing apps/devices or needing an integration that is only yet functional on V2 (classic case is Cayenne, another is TTN Mapper) then go ahead experiment, familiarise yourself and deploy some on V3. In your case, however, if - as is implied from name/description - you have only deployed a SCPF rather than a LoRaWAN GW, please take it off the network and replace with a legitimate GW - even if that is deployed straight to V3. Using these SCPF & DCPF’s really will put you on Santa’s naughty list and might even get you barred from drinking the Black Stuff® in O’Dea’s in Ennis - though I hear John has retired/moved on a few years now so not sure who’s running these days, and it will almost certainly get you barred from visiting Durty Nelley’s at Bunratty! :wink: Coal is the least of your problems!

You are unlikely to be providing any coverage service to the devices in and around Limerick and the Limerick West GW (Aylesbury area) is on only slightly raised garound south of the Ennis road and is just capable of supporting traffic out down the estuary to around the islands and mud banks south of Bunratty - I dont think it helps service any coverage in/around Shannon itself and the others in the city center and to the east are the wrong side of the higher ground stretching down from St Neesans and LIT to south of the Ennis Road.

BTW Best signals I’ve seen from Shannon (historically) were from Airport short term carpark to upper floors windows of Bunratty Castle and from upper floors of Intel development labs building to the Bunratty Castle Hotel (both on SF9) - around 5.5-7.5km IIRC.

1 Like

Wow. Thanks Jeff for such a comprehensive and helpful reply.

Consider my experimental V2 gateway history as of today! ( I haven’t been doing much TTN work since the last few weeks and hadn’t realised what a no no this device now is) and I’ll keep my 8 channel RAK2245, RPi4, balenoOS based gateway on the V3 TTN stack for now. (While home-built I hope it is still regarded as a legitimate GW? Or is there a certification process the completed system needs to undergo?).

Will that keep me allowed into Nelly’s :slight_smile:

It might be a few months until I’m looking to expand with more gateways so I will then go with V2 gateways. (But having a V3 active should provide me with the knowledge and experience to make my later transition of the V2 gateways to V3 easier).

You sound like a local man and very knowledgeably about the ins and outs of TTN. May I e-mail you my proposed project details?

Thanks again for your response.

Kind regards,

Tony

(BTW I’ve just joined and contacted the Limerick City community group https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/community/limerick for advice/help)

A fine choice :wink: Spent more time at Shannon Airport than I care to remember over last 2.5 decades! Though could never get enough of travel to the west coast area. Entry to DN’s granted … may join you for one there in the future should travel ever restart and a good reason for new LoRaWAN deployments in the area arise.

1 Like

Only if you are part of the secret service and need to keep your project under wraps.

Otherwise, why not discuss it in public so you get the benefit of the whole community and the whole community benefits from any points raised.

I for one am intrigued about someone going from 1 “not a gateway” to 10 + 50 devices in the space of 6 months …

3 Likes

Thanks Jeff the drinks are on me :slight_smile:

Sure Descartes I’d love to share my proposal. It’s for the .IE Digital Town Awards - Judging criteria - .IE

I’ve attached the whole doc (a work in progress! :slight_smile: ) and here’s its executive summary followed by the 500 word pitch to the award’s judges.

Executive Summary
We all use radio frequencies each day. Whether it’s our mobile phone or the WiFi in our house. But if we wanted to say make an air quality sensor for the Shannon Wetlands it would cost us at least 10 euros a month to base it on mobile phone technology and it would eat up the battery forcing us to recharge it frequently. Well, LoRaWAN is a free wireless technology that is ideal for such a sensor and a lot more. It would last for months without charging or indefinitely with a small solar panel and would not cost a penny to run. So I propose we submit a Large Town entry proposing the €9,000 (or €5,000 runner up) grant money be used to buy €40 LoRaWAN nodes (which are used as sensors) and €200 LoRaWAN Gateways that connect these nodes to the internet so the sensor data can be shared with the community. We would then have environment data on an ongoing basis (sensors send data every 30 mins) that we can use to plan our town. This could include air quality sensors outside our schools, a weather station at the Model Aircraft Airfield, water depth and quality at the Wetlands and more. And the beauty of this system is as it is open (i.e. not propriety to any manufacturer or network operator) so we can extend and enhance it as our community groups see fit. I believe we would be the first town in Ireland to have such an environmental network infrastructure. It would also be a fantastic educational resource. Want to know more? Then please read the rest of this document :slight_smile: By the way, The Things Network which is the community based web portal my proposal is based on has 17754 gateways and 140632 developers worldwide so we are in safe hands :slight_smile: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/

Grant Award Proposal

Please visit the following website for full details: .IE Digital Town Awards - Judging criteria - .IE

Their criteria and points for the Digital Vision (Strategy) award is to describe the ambition, thinking and rationale behind the initiative (10 points), as well as the expected outcomes and the impact it will have on the town (10 points). Explain how it contributes to the overall digital development of the town (10 points) and changing of attitudes/culture (10 points).

The entry must be 500 words or less and address all the above issues. Below is my entry (please let more how I could make this more effective). I will also attach to my online entry a document of endorsements by different Shannon Community group chairs. But that won’t be used for judging.

The entry must be submitted by Friday 23rd April 2021

The ambition of this proposal is for the residents of Shannon Town to become actively engaged in monitoring, maintaining and improving their immediate environment. My thinking is that wireless tecnology has moved on in leaps and bounds over the last 10 years and The Things Network, formed in 2015 is a mature, worldwide technology which harnesses a long range, free to use wireless protocol (LoRaWAN) to allow people to monitor sensors so let’s use it so see how own town is doing environmentally. The rationale being “you cannot manage if you don’t measure” as we all know too well from our experience of the continued importance of the Covid-19 test and trace process.

The initial outcome of winning the award is heightened awareness that we in Shannon are actively monitoring the quality of our environment, long-term Shannon could become the poster child of enviromental based community planning with access to accurate before/after data for all initiatives taken in by the town. The impact of this will be a greater sense of environmental empowerment to the residents of Shannon.

By installing the handful or so gateways and dozens of assocaited sensor nodes of the Shannon LoRaWAN Area Network (SLÁN) we would be developing a resilient, future-proofed digital infrastructure unique in Ireland. Something our community can grow and enhance ourselves which being an open source project facillitates. In addition, the opportunities for educational involvement are immense as people can design ther own gateways and sensors in addition to buying off-the-shelf products. And as the historical data begins to accumulate we will have an excellent opportunities for studying it.

I see having such a network in Shannon changing so much. It will promote engagement between all community groups. From 10 year olds in CoderDojo in the library “data wrangling” sensor data in Scratch, to Mens’ Shed members helping build and install attractive, weatherproof housings for sensors and gateways, to schools monitoring the traffic polution outside their gates, to the model airclub having an online weather station so members can check windspeeds before travelling to the airfield. Each allotment holder could monitor the unique micro-climate of their plot from ground temperature to slug detection! The wetlands could monitor water levels and quality. And I’m sure each resident of shannon you ask would think of 10 more uses. The resulting attittude and environmental culture change would be seismic.

Winning this award would install pride in the residents of Shannon Town that their town’s technology matches it’s already incredible industrial zone technology and we can start to saying SLÁN to a healthier, more enviromently aware community.

(429 words)Dot IE DIgital Town Vision v0.4.pdf (594.3 KB)

As a bid writing myself, some observations:

Charging isn’t a thing. Should run for years on batteries or decade on solar.

I’d perhaps word it closer to reality to make it clear how open it actually is - anyone can use a device on the TTN network and use community gateways - anyone included businesses - without having to go through the group. It is that open. No permissions, just get a device and start rocking.

Users may be.

High school & university students building & coding devices by learning a real world multi-disciplinary engineering activity. People & businesses installing gateways & devices. Encouraging non-obvious user groups to engage & come up with new applications for the network to host.

1 Like

Thanks Descartes for taking the time to review my proposal.

I’m not submitting until the 20th and I already have a number of community groups supporting it: Tidy Towns, Wetlands, Scouts, CoderDojo, Makerspace, Allotments, Schools, etc.

So I’m hoping for plenty of additional feedback by then.

Responding to your points in turn.

Battery life, I’m being cautious here, as it will depend on how power hungry the sensor is. Say a PM2.5/PM10 air quality board will use a lot more than a Light Dependent Resistor attached to an analogue input. Also the transmission duty cycle I’m pitching at 30 mins but a 60 sec one will use more power. I’m currently conducting tests to provide real numbers for my 4 test sensors.

Openness. True. The fact that it enables other uses outside the environmental groups is a good point. But the focus of the bid is that of community working together environmentally to share sensor data for the common good.

Wow!. That’s some user base! I will update the numbers each time I review the doc :slight_smile:

Promote use. Very true “out of the box” thinking to put in a box! We are very lucky in Shannon Town to have world class tech companies (Intel, Jaguar AI, etc.) next to the airport. I’m hoping to pitch directly to them for support a bit later :slight_smile:

No it won’t, it will be disconnected immediately and reprogrammed to at least 3 minutes:

https://avbentem.github.io/airtime-calculator/ttn/eu868/14

The majority of your devices will be battery powered, that’s what we tend towards.

The focus may well be the environment group, but you are bidding for public money, so if you can show how others outside your group can benefit, that’s got to be a plus.

2 Likes

Thanks Descartes. That’s a massively useful calculator.

1 Like