The hard RAK831 cafe part 1

Documentation for the module is online now at their website

Shipment arrived

Nice to not just get a board but have antenna and more included.

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That all was for €102? :open_mouth:

I’ve paid $120 (excluding shipping), for the set. Being used to the bare bones approach of iC880a modules I did not expect to get an FT2232HL, antenna, cables and a module nicely sandwiched between perspex shields. The shipment includes everything required to get started using an USB connection between a Linux host and the concentrator.

For interested parties, the SMA connector is RP-SMA.

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I guess it won’t take long before the first RPI adapter PCB’s show up :sunglasses:

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@kersing There is a pin labelled CSN on the silk screen, does it correspond to the SPI Chip select line ? on a raspberry pi 3 would this correspond to pin no 24 GPIO 8 (SPI_CE0_N) ?

Hi Guys, just got the RAK831 concentrator working via the semtech github repo (https://github.com/Lora-net/lora_gateway ) code and the sample they provide.

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RAK831 runs fine with mp_pkt_fwd. Next step is a PCB to connect the RPi and the RAK831. (BTW if you use an RPi enabling SPI save a lot of time troubleshooting)

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It’s available again from their Aliexpress store. €104,36, and for €4,35 you get a complimentary baffling enclosure.

So the era of cheap multichannel gateways has come to be? :wink:

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yep :upside_down_face:

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Just to inform you guys, I’m working on a small Board to connect the RAK831 to the Pi. It is electricaly fused and features an BME280 Sensor.

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what’s the purpose of this temp sensor… the board temp or the environment ?
Is it theoretically possible to have an I2C sd1306 display… showing the time and contents of the last packet received or other status things like TTN connection ? :sunglasses:

The sensor is just for ā€œgeneral purposeā€. Monitoring of the environment where the Gateway sits or how you wanna call it… I placed it as much away from the rPi cpu as possible.

hmm, theres no really good place for an oled display. I could add an header with i2c to connect such things via Wires?

yes off course a header… and some software changes …

So, now with header fpr i2c stuff. Theoreticaly even possible to directly solder a Oled display and just let it ā€œhang outā€.

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nice, I don’t know ( @kersing) if its even possible to have the spi concentrator AND an I2c display working at the same time, displaying some data

I have this idea to build a LoRaWAN gateway in an old DVD player (those you get for free now :slight_smile: )

should be nice to see if your gateway is working

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Technicaly it isn’t any issue to use a SPI and I2C device on the Pi. It should be even no issue to use the BME280 and an OLED display, which are both connected via I2C, at the ā€œsameā€ time on the Pi.

Using SPI and I2C on an RPi should not be a problem. However I did not plan for I2C devices in my design and the adapter PCBs have been ordered. Last status: PCBs are in production at the factory.

My gateways are in closed steel enclosures so displays and additional leds etc make no sense. For temperature monitoring I’m using the RPi CPU core temperature sensor. The CPU is the part that gets hottest (in my experience) so when its temperature is alright all other parts should be fine.

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Totally agree, I personally never found a use for temp sensors on the gateway because I rely on the RPi CPU core temp, but some people like it, so as long as it’s optional to connect the BME280, it’s perfect.

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So, this board also supports OTAA nodes, right? I need that since my single_packet_fwd doesn’t work like that. I need OTAA.