I have the RAK7258, but the LG308 seems better in some respect:
- Published schematic
- Actually published build sources for the specific product, vs. RAK where they do provide sources that can create a working build but that’s offered as a solution for their kits-of-parts rather than being intended for their completed boxes
- newer Linux kernel
- LTE support via an mPCI slot rather than as a soldered-in factory option, ie, you can pick your own modem if you don’t want theirs
- embedded USB hub so you can still have an external USB port when opting for LTE
- (if I recall correctly) AR9331 chip releases the SPI flash lines when held in reset, so you can use something else to reprogram the flash if you break U-Boot; the MT76x8 on the RAK does not meaning you probably need to desolder the flash or find all the JTAG lines. On the other hand, you likely don’t need to change U-Boot on either board.
I haven’t actually seen or tried one in person, but some downside including from past usage of the AR9331 chip in other things:
- only one serial port, ie, you can’t have both a serial debug console and a GPS at the same time, and no external serial port at all (vs the annoying RJ45 on the RAK)
- AR9331 oddly requires a magic partition with radio details at the end of flash
- Dragino pushes the bogus single channel idea with those models rather than their “real” gateway mostly being what come up in searches, RAK seems to be only selling legitimate gateways
The MT76x8 in the RAK and AR9331 in the Dragino are competing MIPS SoC’s - essentially derivatives of aging wifi router solutions pushed for the IoT gadget market. Both typically run OpenWRT, booting a read-only compressed image from an SPI flash and could be set to either run from a ramdisk or an overlay filesystem that writes runtime changes to a journal - far, far better solutions for a field deployment than anything using an SD card as a filesystem.
My general feeling is either box is best used with a customized build and reverse SSH tunnel type administration so comparing UI candy isn’t personally interesting. And while both offer the option of running essentially the same network server on the box, that’s irrelevant to TTN and really only useful for single gateway demo networks anyway.
Past thread on the LG308: