Take the tracker outdoors so the GPS has a good view of the sky.
Hi @LoRaTracker,
thank you, directly under the sky it did work. Though I cannot say that I am satisfied with the solution. I wanted to put the tracker into a wooden sailing boat. Do you think it will come through a bit of pine?
I opened the box up to check for an antenna and noticed that there is none except the chip. Would it be worth trying adding one? Do you have any recommandations or even manuals?
Thanks a lot again for the quick response. For now it works so I can stop for today.
Bests,
Felix
GPSs have to work with very weak signals, so may not work well indoors, next to windows, or in thick boxes. The only way to find out is to try, you have the GPS after all.
I doubt the GPS has no antenna, it would be unlikely to work without one and neither have I ever seen the inside of a RAK Tracker.
There should be a 15mm x15mm lozenge ant for the gps as below
And a small pcb patch ant for LoRa similar to
Though actual design may vary and have seem small stumpy stick ants with some RAK bds.
And there looks like there maybe u.fl pads for a for an external GPS antenna ?
For the LoRa Ant?!
I dont have a 7200 but previous gen 5205’s shipped with both LoRa and and GPS Ants on short pig-tails (u.fl or SMA options were available) suspect image just shows lozenge placement…still using pigtail connection?
No, for the GPS, top right.
Ah right…the unpopulated pads! Guess I need to pull an actual photo to check 
For follow on readers there is more on this tracker - inc photos - here (basically higher up this thread - around Aug/Sept '19 
Thats them, most likely intended for an external powered GPS antenna.
Thanks for clearification. Wasn’t sure if the square alone already contains/is the antenna 
Is there a way to increase the send rate? At the moment I recieve results every 5-6 seconds
You mean decrease?
If you’re doing that all day long, then even when sending only 1 byte of application payload (hence 14 bytes for the full LoRaWAN packet), on the fastest data rate, TTN will only allow for 2 messages per minute.
And you could be breaching the legal limit (1% duty cyle) of what you can send in an hour, worst case in 2 minutes, best case 42 minutes.
Documentation:
https://doc.rakwireless.com/rak7200-lora-tracker
https://doc.rakwireless.com/datasheet/rakproducts/rak7200-lora-tracker-datasheet
https://downloads.rakwireless.com/LoRa/RAK7200-Tracker/
Use the serial tool to send at+set_config=lora:send_interval:1:XXX where XXX is the number of seconds between sends.
1 Like
Ping on this. open and close is enable disable, but what about the other two?
As RAK have had a big make-over on the documentation, there’s only 0 (close) and 1 (open) listed, but no sleep or standby options listed.
From experience, it’s worth a try to see how the command responds, but reality is that RAK are the subject matter experts so I’d carry on over on their forum.
As you can see I have 2 trackers 7200 with external antenna. After collecting dust for a while they are now back in business for some experiments. I discovered that one of them was working fine, providing nicely every 1 minute a GPS coordinate during my walk around the block, the other one did not and was a bit lost for most of the time. I discovered on the debug terminal that one device was falling asleep all the time while the other one stayed awake. It really took me a very long time to discover that there is a not-documented feature to disable sleep-mode which is : at+setconfig=lora:send_interval:2:XX (see top of this subject)
My question : Is there a complete list of commands, options, settings and hidden features for the 7200 ? Google brings me to all kinds of lists more or less the same but not always so where can I find it?
1 Like
This:
Hello everyone, I am very new and inexperienced and was wondering if you could help me configure and optimize airtime for an asset tracking application.
So far I have disabled the sensors and left only GPS and Voltage.
But whether I change data_rate, ch_mask, or Adr doesn’t seem to affect anything. I’m getting a SF12 125khz and 1155ms which is too much…
I’m pasting some status info below:
OK Work Mode: LoRaWAN
Region: EU868
Send_interval: 3600s
Auto send status: true.
Send_interval work at no sleep.
Join_mode: ABP
DevAddr: XXXXXX
AppsKey: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
NwksKey: XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Class: A
Joined Network:true
IsConfirm: unconfirm
AdrEnable: false
EnableRepeaterSupport: false
RX2_CHANNEL_FREQUENCY: 869525000, RX2_CHANNEL_DR:0
RX_WINDOW_DURATION: 3000ms
RECEIVE_DELAY_1: 1000ms
RECEIVE_DELAY_2: 2000ms
JOIN_ACCEPT_DELAY_1: 5000ms
JOIN_ACCEPT_DELAY_2: 6000ms
Current Datarate: 3
Primeval Datarate: 3
ChannelsTxPower: 0
UpLinkCounter: 1
DownLinkCounter: 0
OK *0,on,868100000,0,5; *1,on,868300000,0,5; *2,on,868500000,0,5; *3,on,0,0,0; 4,off,0,0,0; 5,off,0,0,0; 6,off,0,0,0; 7,off,0,0,0; *8,on,867100000,0,5; *9,on,867300000,0,5; *10,on,867500000,0,5; *11,on,867700000,0,5; *12,on,867900000,0,5; 13,off,0,0,0; 14,off,0,0,0; 15,off,0,0,0
Any help much appreciated !
Welcome to the TTN Forum
I dont have a 7200 to play with myself (others may chime in) but:
Have you registered you device under V2 or V3 console?
If V2
Is fine but for V3 this needs to be 5sec.
Also for RX2
DR should not be DR0 (SF12) in TTN we use SF9 (DR3) for the RX2 exchange. Devices should not be permitted to join at SF12.
Recommend you try OTAA vs ABP, esp in V3.
What have you programmed in for DevAddr? How generated? 00 or 01 ok for experimental nodes but TTN assigns you a DevAddr 26 xx xx xx. Note no point masking this in posts as it is Tx’d as part of any msg and visible publically in any receiving GW logs
Once corrected try with ADR and device in fixed location for a time - how long are you waiting for SF change? IIRC ADR kicks in around 20 msgs under V2 - keep device say 10-200m from GW in LOS and see how it behaves over time. ADR on a tracker doesnt make sense, however, for field use as, being a mobile device, it may quickly move out of range of any lower SF’s automatially set under ADR and then needs to re-adjust and play catch up - loosing track info and if too far out perhaps not re-connecting! (esp wre RX2 is at SF9).