Hello, I’m a total newbie with lora and lorawan. There is no TTN gateway in my town (Cherbourg France) only the pay for professional ones.
I would like to experiment with lora and lorawan with arduino for agronomical and meteorological purpose so I’m considering building a TTN gateway .
I’ve got a spare pi 3, an internet connection.
Is there somewhere a step by step explanation for that with the current version of TTN? I’ve found one for V2 with non current lora hat.
Thank you a lot
If you have the SPI hardware (concentrator) to connect to a raspi, V3 is the same with V2 for gateways. In my case I just changed the server_address in a json file from router.eu.thethings.network (V2) to eu1.cloud.thethings.network.
Not using raspi - but I suppose it’s the same.
For concentrator buy SX1302 or SX1303 (extreme temperatures), not SX1308. SX1302 is the newest with two times more demodulators and it needs 10 times less wattage. 20 times more efficient 
There is a lot to say about DIY gateways. Before I get there, I want to mention that DIY, financially, cannot compete with what available in the market, either second hand or new.
Second hand: there are hundreds of Helium miners for prices as low as 100 euro on the web. These are easily converted to gateways that can connect to LNS like TTN CE. Please pay attention to the fact that they should be RPI -based as this simplifies the software. with this gateway you can have the DIY experince on a software level. (and a bit of hacking 
)
New: There are cheap off-the-shelve gateways available like the TTIG (+/- €110) or the Mikrotik wAP8 (+/- € 160). No DIY experience but a quick and stable go-live.
DIY: Going DIY will feed your knowledge incentive on both hard- and software. DIY is likely to be more expensive than the previous options. From my experince I suggest two options.
- Use the RAK5146 PiHAT Kit for LoRaWAN or,
- Or the iC880A-SPI - LoRaWAN Concentrator 868 MHz in combination with the concentrator shield for raspberryPI. If you go this path, please let me know I have some boards availabale and you can get one for free (at the cost for sending to you by mail)
Both hardware options work great with the multipacket forwarder of @kersing in the Balena solution of @jpmeijers which you can find here: GitHub - kersing/ttn-resin-gateway-rpi-1: Balena code for TTN V3
Ofcourse there are other software packages too.
Good luck!
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Save yourself $5, the GPS isn’t really necessary for TTN.
The RAK7246 Raspberry Pi Gateway - Easy Set-up with WisGate Developer D0/D0+ PiZero ready to run is good - and has an external antenna connection so with a careful selection of cable & antenna, can do external as well.
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Hello 
But if he wants to experiment with Class B end devices in the future, he needs GPS (for Pulse Per Second and accurate timing), right?
I would also choose RAK5146 with GPS or iC880A, where PPS can be additionally connected (to pin 19).
Tutorial: 868 MHz RAK5146 SPI – LoRa Basics Station
Thank you for your time and best regards,
Andy Knebl
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Erm, I guess, not sure how many people experiment with Class B, just getting to first base of Class A is a journey in itself.
Not sure how the PPS is used, is it not the time on the gateway?
Nice tutorials on your site!
I don’t know, you’re probably right. 
We are also starting to play with class B.
These are pulses from the GPS module and are used by the LoRa Basics Station to accurately time the beacons. You can find it on Wikipedia as Pulse-per-second signal.
Time Synchronization Configuration:
When available, the PPS can come from hardware, or it can be simulated using software by means of a FIFO file.
When I started the LoRa Basics Station without a GPS PPS, the beacons were automatically suspended due to timing inaccuracy. I also tried “fuzzy” but it didn’t work for me. Maybe I set something wrong.
PPS configuration
So when I connected the PPS from the NEO-6M GYNEO6MV2 GPS module to the iC880A concentrator and set pps to true in station.conf, the beacons were restored. And the end device could be used with class B. I tested this on Seeeduino LoRaWAN RHF76-052DM V3.5.13 end device.
It also worked with the RAK5146 concentrator with built-in GPS without having to configure anything in station.conf. They already have pps set to true there. Class B end device worked.
Thank you very much
Thank you for your time and best regards,
Andy Knebl
thank you, everybody. I just got a pi zeroW . looks like there is a ready-to-use package. There is some hat for zero pi for less than 30 €, plan to make an external box and connect it via wifi . this way a lot more coverage, only the power wire to go outside.
just the first step of experimentation, to have the proper infrastructure to work with.
and to give the other guy around the use of it.
any advice before all the mistake I will do 
That is probably just a board with some connectors, not containing the required concentrator (the real gateway) board. At least for new hardware a concentrator is significantly more expensive.
Its possible to pick up 2nd hand ex Helium miner SPI conc cards on Hats for aro €30 plus shipping on reseller sites like ebay Have a few in stock myself, just in case I need a quick cheap deployment…
You’ve not shared a link to the module(s) you’ve found so bit of a guess, but there are several HATs for Pi Zero’s in that price range, most of which have an E22 serial point to point only module on them that will not connect to a LoRaWAN network.
Share more detail so the volunteers giving up their time to answer you can help better/faster
https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/4000844192978.html
as a newbie , I didn’t get there is a need for a specific hardware for a gateway, I thought it is the pi making the work.
More the english is not my first language so …
Thank you for your help, Ineed a lot of reading I guess
That is an Sx1262 node board using an EByte LoRa/LoRaWAN module for building a sensor class device, NOT a GW concentrator HAT….it can not be used for a LoRaWAN gateway build. Look for concentrator boards with an SX130x chip and supporting device(s) for that task
My lazy side won! That’s the fastest way to get something working. The rak7246 is the way to go, ready to run thing. thank you a lot for the advice.
I’ve seen now, I will get a ready to run one, I will keep free time to work on my irrigation pb
This is an SX1262 LoRa board using a private protocol for Point to Point, Multicast and Relay modes. It can not and never will support LoRaWAN without some very serious Dremel action.
Good point - hadnt dug into the detailed device type/spec, just noted the '1262 class vs any specific firmware build/capabilities…
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