Getting started with iC880a + Raspberry Pi 3 gateway

Gateways
1

I have 8-channel gateway which is Raspberry Pi 3B+ with iC880a (https://market.thingpark.com/solutions/tracking/ic880a-lorawan-concentrator-868mhz-404802). I am also open to purchasing new gateways if the following problem gets solved using the new ones.

I started looking into LoRa last week and currently looking to connect one 8-channel gateway with 20 nodes without using The Things Network. I have looked into LoRaServer as well and I would like to know if there is a quick start guide with LoRaServer using which we can hold communication between node and 8-channel gateway? Or is there any code example which enables communication between node and gateway (or client and server) without using TTN?

If not, I believe I might have to code something similar to the following: https://github.com/dragino/rpi-lora-tranceiver/blob/master/dragino_lora_app/main.c such that my code should contain 8-channels instead of one. Would following the aforementioned script be a good idea? Any guidance/information would be highly appreciated!

2

Please see https://www.loraserver.io/lora-gateway-os/overview/, altough this still the first test-release, I believe it is the easiest way to get started :slight_smile: There is also an image which comes with all the LoRa Server components pre-installed on the gateway.

Alternatively, you could use the base image and follow one of these guides to setup LoRa Server: https://www.loraserver.io/guides/.

3

Thank you for the reply and the link. I understand from reading that the packet forwarder will be pre-installed within lora-gateway-os-full and I would not have to worry about scripting from scratch which is pretty neat. However, I have two questions:

  1. Does LoRaServer has any airtime or number of messages per day policy/limitations? I tried to look it up but have been unable to find any such information.

  2. Since I am still learning, I have been wondering if this gateway would be able to receive messages from any node as long as the SF and frequency matches? My nodes are Raspberry Pi 3B+ + LoRa GPS Hat that sends a 200 byte message every minute. I was wondering if there would be any issues?

Thank you

4
  1. No, this is (currently) not implemented.
  2. The iC880a concentrator board has the same chipset as most other (commercial) gateways, so you are good with this one :slight_smile:
1 Like
5

I’m following the same maze i think. Between node and gateway you don’t need TTN i think, but you need some servers to connect your node (client) to. I stumbled upon this one : https://github.com/dudmuck/LoRaWAN-Backend, maybe something to look at. Maybe I point you in the wrong direction, but it helped me.

6

The ChirpStack Gateway OS is the easiest way to get started :slight_smile: https://www.chirpstack.io/gateway-os/overview/

After flashing the SD card, you login run “sudo gateway-config” and you configure your iC880a shield. The only thing you need to know is GPIO which is connected to the iC880a reset.

When you flash the “-full” image, it already comes with all the ChirpStack components installed :slight_smile: