RAK7244 gateway and Dragino Lora Shield 1.4 + Leonardo

Hello,
I am very new at LoRa and am trying to learn the basics. I have an RAK7244 gateway which I think I have set up correctly–at least it is showing up on the map for Ashland, VA USA. I would like to set up a Dragano Lora shield as a device but am not sure how to get the necessary EUIs. When I try deviceinfo.ino it is unable to connect with the shield. I’m sure there is something simple here but I’m not yet at the stage to figure out what needs to be done. Thanks in advance for any help.
Bob
bgrattan@umw.edu

If you are using The Things Network Arduino Device Lib, then that’s not the Arduino library you are looking for - it’s for TTN’s own Arduino Board and you have the Dragino board.

The Dragino website has lots of good documentation and samples - that would be a great place to start.

Some boards come with a DevEUI, some don’t. Some have AppEUI’s, some don’t. Some have AppsKey’s, some don’t. You will need to read the the docs for the product, for any keys not provided, use the TTN console to generate the others.

If in doubt, search the forum and feel free to ask questions. Welcome to the ride.

Thanks, Nick, I’ll look more at the Dragino site. What I’m hoping for is finding a simple IDE sketch that is known to work with a Dragino LoRa Shield 1.4 + Arduino and connecting to a RAK7244 gateway. Once I get one working then it will be easier to figure out what to do next. I’ll keep reading…
Cheers
Bob

Oh dear. No such thing I’m afraid.

Apart from checking in on the Dragino website so you know what resources are there - the vendors support would always be a recommended first port of call, I’ll help you cut to the chase because the Dragino instructions are somewhat useless and ancient.

Use this:

https://github.com/matthijskooijman/arduino-lmic

Get the release package from here:

I know it says it’s deprecated but a, it’s simple to use and b, it’s the only one that will fit on the RAM that’s available on a Leonardo.

Someone will come along shortly to say you really shouldn’t bother with this, and I’ll then chime in and point out that this is the hardware you have to hand.

So just to be clear, the ATmega32U and ATmega328 (Uno) and some such are very resource constrained on the RAM - if you use a far more up to date version of LMiC, here:

about the only person that can get that to run on an Arduino Uno/Leo/Pro Mini is me because I know what settings to change but even then I’m on the brink of filling the RAM so there isn’t much space left for any actual sensors.

So, for your next device hardware, the negotiated peace agreement on here is that we recommend the Adafruit Feather M0 with RFM95 as it has a much bigger MCU on board and is supported by the MCCI library as a first class citizen. To which I agree as getting the original ‘Classic’ LMiC running can be a bit messy.

When you setup the library, you will need to set the pins - the connections between the MCU and the radio and you will have to get some EUI’s from somewhere - generating them on the v2 console seems to be the current advice as the v3 console doesn’t generate either a DevEUI or an AppEUI for you. So in that respect, use the v2 console for now and stick with ABP as the connection as you are likely to be restarting your device frequently and OTAA can get stuck.

Also, before you have everything in the same room, move the Gateway 10m or one brick wall away so that the two aren’t shouting at each other, particularly the device to the gateway that overloads the RF input stage and it can’t hear the signal properly.

If this sounds complicated, it’s because it is, but if you take it step by step, read around the subject and come back with questions, you will get going.

In the meanwhile, to flesh out the details on LoRaWAN, I find these a good read:

Read all of: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/lorawan/
The devices section of: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/devices/
The gateways section of: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/
The network section of: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/network/
The applications and API sections of: https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/applications/

And if you want a working example (sort of, it probably needs updating, uses an older MCCI), see here:

Enjoy!

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Thanks, that should keep me busy for a while. Bob