Where can I get a LoRaWAN gateway for 915 MHz, like for use in New Zealand?

Hi all
Noobie here. Where can I get a LORA gateway for 915mhz??
The ic880a look only to be 868mhz. New Zealand doesn’t use that freq
I’d like to get my hand dirty and build one around a PI module is possible. Can a ic880 be reconfigured??

Thanks
Snow

G’day Snow, Cairns QLD here. We are playing with 915 MHZ using RFM95w on Raspberry Pi 2, 3 & Arduino ESP 8266 among others… Gateway & Nodes. As it stands: Gateway on raspi is a write off, not supported for OTAA via TTN. Gateway on ESP is a write off, no reliable frequency hopping (Channel), poor data rate matching (SF). While we have radios working, sending data up to TTN, AFAIK no one has had a packet down through a home made single-channel gateway sent back to a single-channel node, using any combination. Trying to fix nodes to single channel/single data rate fails using lmic. We haven’t given up though, which is why I am awake now at 1:34 AM :slight_smile:

Don’t know anything about ic880,

Any tips appreciated,
Cheers,
X

Just in case you missed my other post, I have it working. 2x RFM95s and 2x ESP8266 are talking, with one as gateway and one as node. Messages bidirectional to the things network :smile: Let me know if you want help!

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Hi X
Thanks for your reply. Im green as when it comes to the LoRa tech , so i’ll be needing spoon feeding.
I would like to build and set up a LoRaWAN gateway and connect some nodes to it.

What information do you have about building the gateway. I see you can use a “off the self” modules reasonably pricey thou. I’ve only got prices off multitech 915mhz systems. Any help would be much appreciated.

Cheers
Snow

You also have TTN gateway priced around same as Multitech.
https://shop.thethingsnetwork.com/index.php/product/the-things-gateway/

You can use IC980 from Imst. I think it is possible tu setup 915 MHz. Sure you have to use corect settings in global conf file.

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I am led to believe that the RisingHF RHF0M301 LoRa Gateway works as well. I hope so, because I just ordered two of them.

I went from esp8266/rfm95 with fixed channel code
to esp8266/rfm95 with 3 channel scanning code
to a substantial order with RisingHF

Wish me luck,

http://www.risinghf.com/product/rhf0m301/?lang=en

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Hi Xenek, do you mind me asking the cost of these RisingHF? thanks

I bought a bit. Total cost including currency exchange, shipping, and margin, buying through a local agent, was $1226 Australian.

Products bought were

1x RHF0M301-920 - Lora Gateway / Concentrator

1x Lora Discovery Kit comprising of:

1 x Raspberry Pi – Embedded Linux Platform
1 x RHF0M301 – LoRa Gateway
1 x RHF4T002 – Adapter for Rpi and RHF0M301
1 x RHF3M076 – LoRaWAN AT Modem End point
3 x RHF76-052 – STM32L0 + SX1276 module
1 x USB to UART adapter
1 x 4 pin dual female splittable jumper wire
1 x SD Card
1 x Adpater
3 x USB cables
1 x Ethernet cable
2 x Antenna

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FYI, For the gateway controller I will use an odroid XU4, with 16gb EMMC, and using a xu4 Shifter Shield. It’s not cheap, but I get a high powered computer for the gateway. I have it configured to boot headless with a power save governor, but through SSH I can bring up a full Ubuntu 16.04.2 LTS mate desktop over gigabit Ethernet via x2go. It’s essentially a fast computer I can use for multiple purposes. I don’t think anyone else has a RHF0M301-920 working on an XU4… Not sure how it will go.

Sounds interesting… you might need to fiddle a bit with the SPI path to get it to work, but other than that, the same setup we’re all using should work.

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Hi,
Regarding the problem of fixing nodes to a single frequency / data rate using LMIC, I think I am missing the context around your comment. Did you mean you cannot do this by statically defining the configuration on the node?

I am a newb and really unqualified to be messing with code. But, I have tried, and don’t seem to be able to get lmic on a node working properly. I haven’t found how to fix it to one send/receive frequency.

Could be wrong, but it seems to me the node is always trying to send on the next sub band channel along. On my monitor / lora scanner it presents itself as a staircase pattern over time, where it starts on 915200, then goes to 915400, and onwards through the remaining 6 channels, then returns back to 195200. It doesn’t use a random channel. Fixing it seems an effort in futility, though I did get the node fixed to one channel & working once, I don’t recall the code I used.

Yet, it listens for replies after each transmit on 923.3 or thereabouts…

What would be super useful would be a guide on using TTN with a single channel gateway, and a single channel node, with links to working code that specifies precisely how to lock it down to a channel at node & gateway, and how to monitor the channels first to be sure you aren’t crowding out a busy frequency. It’s probably a horror story for the TTN crew, but until we get cheap gateways (IE: Same price as a cheap wifi AP) there will always be people wanting to learn and join in, but using single channel hardware, both gateways & nodes.

A formalized software setup, that links into TTN console node & gateway descriptions, would both gather valuable information and provide the stepping stone people need. Not everyone can spend the $1500 I have spent so far on hardware to simply learn & play.

I will post a code fragment tomorrow to show you how to do it.

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The LMIC driver I am using supports only the EU and the USA however you can fool the driver to use the frequencies you need.

Here is the configuration I use the the USA. It is not ideal for you for a number of reasons, e.g. it does
not cover setting the TX power in the event the max Tx power in Australia is lower than the allowed
max Tx power in the US. The max Tx power is defined in the lmic.h file with the constant MAX_TXPOW_125kHz

Here are the relevant sections from my LMIC.c configuration of Arduino UNO and Wemos D1 (Rev 1) boards.

THIS SECTION IS THE PINMAP. The UNO is commented out and the Wemos is active
/*
// This pin map is for a Arduino UNO fitted with a Dragino Lora Shield V1.3/V1.4
// The shield has jumpers J_DIO1 and J_DIO2 installed and J-DIO5 removed
// Jumpers SV-2, SV-4 and SV3 are jumpered such that the jumpers are installed closest to the edge of the PCB
const lmic_pinmap lmic_pins = {
.nss = 10,
.rxtx = LMIC_UNUSED_PIN,
.rst = 9,
.dio = {2, 6, 7},
};
*/

// Wemos D1 (Rev 1) pin mapping and jumper settings for use with Dragino Lora Shield Rev 1.3
// Lora Shield - install jumpers SVx such that the jumpers are installed closest to the edge of the PCB
// Lora Shield - remove jumpers J_D101, J_D102, J_D105
// Add link from J_D101 pin closest to the aerial connector to D3 on the Arduino header
const lmic_pinmap lmic_pins = {
.nss = 15, // CS
.rxtx = LMIC_UNUSED_PIN, // For placeholder only, Do not connected on RFM92/RFM95
.rst = 2, // Needed on RFM92/RFM95? (probably not) D0/GPIO16
.dio = {16, 5, LMIC_UNUSED_PIN}, // Specify pin numbers for DIO0, 1, 2
};

THIS IS THE SECTION FOR THE SINGLE CHANNEL CONFIGURATION.
The LMIC driver I am using supports only the EU and US frequencies
YOU SHOULD MODIFY THE CFG_us915 section to fool the LMIC driver
You do this by finding the BAND in the US spectrum that the frequency
you want to use is mapped to and then use it in the LMIC_selectSubBand() function. The US configuration
has only two bands (0 and 1) so I do not think you need to change the current value

Then work out what the offset of you frequency from the start of the US frequency range and configure
the two “for loops” setting the LMIC_disableChannel(i); such that the desired channel is the only one that
is not disabled.

#if defined(CFG_eu868)
     .......
     .......
#elif defined(CFG_us915)
// NA-US channels 0-71 are configured automatically
// but only one group of 8 should (a subband) should be active
// TTN recommends the second sub band, 1 in a zero based count.
// https://github.com/TheThingsNetwork/gateway-conf/blob/master/US-global_conf.json
LMIC_selectSubBand(1);

for (int i=0;i<8;i++)
  LMIC_disableChannel(i);
  
for (int i=9;i<72;i++)
  LMIC_disableChannel(i);
#endif
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I will try this on my wemos d1 mini now. Thank you, hopefully it helps our NZ friends also! A gateway needs nodes!

Sandgroper, I have visuals to show how it worked.

Before:-

After:-

Cheers,
X

Hi everyone,

Is there an update on any new concentrators for the 915MHz parts of the world?
Or to rephrase the question, what’s the best setup you would recommend for 915MHz? I don’t want to buy a built gateway, I need to build it from scratch, therefore need part recommendations.

Thanks
\//_

I’m happily using a https://sandboxelectronics.com/?product=lorago-port-multi-channel-lorawan-gateway premade on-top of a Raspberry Pi.

You can build one yourself using the same baseband processor Semtech SX1301 and RF frontend Semtech SX1257 for 915Mhz https://hackaday.io/project/13373-lora-concentrator
There are schematics and PCBs for that project on Github https://github.com/will127534/LoRa-concentrator

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Thank you so much! I will check these links asap