Let me start by saying I’m not sure who I should be bringing this report to (RAKWireless vs. here). I decided to start here because Chirpstack v4 docs indicate that the v3 gateway bridge should work with Chirpstack v4 in protobuf mode—Am I correct in understanding that backwards compatibility with protobuf formats is expected?
Our problem: We have many RAK7289 gateways running the WisGateOS. I don’t believe–but don’t know for sure–that WisGate uses chirpstack-gateway-bridge internally; however, one way or another they support both Chirpstack’s JSON and protobuf protocols. I have had much success with this gateway and Chirpstack v3.
When upgrading to Chirpstack v4 things have mostly worked. I see uplinks for other nearby devices and JoinRequests from my sensors. I see Chirpstack command a downlink over MQTT, but that is where things end. When the command is received by the gateway, it reports:
Fri Sep 23 15:47:48 2022 daemon.info gwBridge[12210]: Pb txinfo is NULL
Which isn’t that useful, but indicates the protobuf message was somehow not as expected. I did notice that the downlink protobuf definitions have had some changes in the code and there is now a “legacy” structure. I’m still trying to grok how that is involved, but I suspect it is part of the issue.
Does Chirpstack v4 somehow detect old versions of the protocol? Perhaps that check is not sufficient for RAK’s bridge? Should everything be backwards compatible and the bug on RAK’s side? Should this be reported on GitHub?
We are very excited about Chirpstack v4. The new UI is great and everything is very easy to deploy. Thank you for working on and gifting us this work!