LoRa packet-Forwarder doesn't start

I have installed lora_gateway and the lora-packet-forwarder git repos from Lora-net in my raspberry pi 3B and made connections to my IC8808 board as indicated in the image below.

Raspberry Pi IC8808 Connections

I compiled the lora_gateway and the lora-packet-forwarder repos successfully and produced the all their binaries.

My SPI for the Raspberry Pi is activated via raspi-config. I have confirmed that SPI is active by running cat /boot/config.txt | grep spi. My problem is that sometimes the packet forwarder choses to not start and give the following error. This issue persists for long when it starts. I receive the following error message continuously.

pi@raspberrypi:~/packet_forwarder/lora_pkt_fwd $ ./lora_pkt_fwd 
*** Beacon Packet Forwarder for Lora Gateway ***
Version: 4.0.1
*** Lora concentrator HAL library version info ***
Version: 5.0.1;
***
INFO: Little endian host
INFO: found global configuration file global_conf.json, parsing it
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named SX1301_conf, parsing SX1301 parameters
INFO: lorawan_public 1, clksrc 1
INFO: LBT is disabled
INFO: antenna_gain 0 dBi
INFO: Configuring TX LUT with 16 indexes
INFO: radio 0 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 867500000, RSSI offset -166.000000, tx enabled 1, tx_notch_freq 129000
INFO: radio 1 enabled (type SX1257), center frequency 868500000, RSSI offset -166.000000, tx enabled 0, tx_notch_freq 0
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 0>  radio 1, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 1>  radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 2>  radio 1, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 3>  radio 0, IF -400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 4>  radio 0, IF -200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 5>  radio 0, IF 0 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 6>  radio 0, IF 200000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora multi-SF channel 7>  radio 0, IF 400000 Hz, 125 kHz bw, SF 7 to 12
INFO: Lora std channel> radio 1, IF -200000 Hz, 250000 Hz bw, SF 7
INFO: FSK channel> radio 1, IF 300000 Hz, 125000 Hz bw, 50000 bps datarate
INFO: global_conf.json does contain a JSON object named gateway_conf, parsing gateway parameters
INFO: gateway MAC address is configured to B827EBFFFE243B19
INFO: server hostname or IP address is configured to "127.0.0.1"
INFO: upstream port is configured to "1700"
INFO: downstream port is configured to "1700"
INFO: downstream keep-alive interval is configured to 10 seconds
INFO: statistics display interval is configured to 30 seconds
INFO: upstream PUSH_DATA time-out is configured to 100 ms
INFO: packets received with a valid CRC will be forwarded
INFO: packets received with a CRC error will NOT be forwarded
INFO: packets received with no CRC will NOT be forwarded
ERROR: [main] failed to start the concentrator

I have made sure that the SPI connections and all pins are properly connected with the help of a multimeter. I tried two methods, namely by connecting the IC8808 board to the raspberry pi with jumber cables and also using intermediate PCB specially printed to make the above connections stated in the image. In both cases, I have received successful results. But at times, when this unit choses not to work, it just doesnt work for hours and sometimes a day or so. This unpredictable behavior is really frustrating… But it also means that my connections must be right. And I can assure that there is no lose connection from the Rpi end or from the IC8808 end. Below is a photo of both when they are connected using the intermediate board- A method that has worked but sometimes dosnt work. I have also tested with multiple raspberry pi3’s and multiple IC8808 boards. This issue is common to all setups.

Is this the place from which everyone gets their updated Packet forwarder and lora_gateway software? I am also worried that this is an incorrect repo as not many people seem to have this issue.
The git-hub repo I got my software from : https://github.com/Lora-net/lora_gateway

How can I solve this issue? Any advices are really appreciated.

observation : Once I keep on re-starting the packet-forwarder (sometimes over a half a day!) , it does start. When it did, I has run for weeks without trouble!

I can confirm that the repositories that you are using are correct.

made connections to my IC8808 board

I think you mean the IC880A-SPI? iC880A-SPI - LoRaWAN Concentrator 868 MHz | LoRa Concentrators | Wireless Modules | IMST GmbH. Did you see this manual? https://wireless-solutions.de/images/stories/downloads/Radio%20Modules/iC880A/iC880A-SPI_QuickStartGuide.pdf

Did you see this section in the manual?

2.2.2 Preparing the Reset Pin Control

Also this note could be related to your issue:

The power pins (21, 22) have to be connected to a power source that is able to provide more than 700 mA. Therefore it is recommended to choose a proper power supply that is able to supply the iC880A-SPI and the host system (e.g. Raspberry PI) at the same time.

Hope this helps.

Thank you Brocaar for your response. I confirm that the reset pin was indeed the issue. When I manually reseted this pin, it worked.

TO achieve this reset, I connected the reset pin of the IC880A to GND --> V+ --> GND. This is sort of mimicking a software reset, just that this is hardware oriented. This helped me confirm the problem.

Now I can start to dig deep as to why my software reset didn’t work. This should be fairly easy. I should be able figure this out.

Thank you a lot for your response again.

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With this setup, do we need to install lora_gateway and the packet_forwarder both on Raspberry Pi along with Lora Gateway Bridge?

From the installation guide, all I understood is that we only need to install the packet_forwarder with Lora Gateway Bridge, and modify local_conf.json file with our Gateway Bridge address (in this case localhost) and port (as mentioned in configuration setup).

If we do need to install both the packet_forwarder and lora_gateway components as pre-requisites, does this QuickStartGuide guide have sufficient information for the installation of lora_gateway?

1 Like

Any opinion about this?

any updates?
I’m also interesting to know about this.

Permission denied while executing (sudo) ./IC880A-SPI-reset.sh…any opinion?

I placed it in Desktop of RPI 3 and tried to executed it,as i mentioned, before running packet forwarder.

A post was split to a new topic: RAK 831 on Intel Edison board

Hello @brocaar! If you know about it or you issued anything like this.

I have installed in RPi 3 lora-gateway-bridge and lora-packet-forwarder.
I also created a bash-script which, resets IC880A concentrator firstly and run packet-forwarder secondly.
As you mentioned above:

2.2.2 Preparing the Reset Pin Control

Also this note could be related to your issue:

The power pins (21, 22) have to be connected to a power source that is able to provide more than 700 mA. Therefore it is recommended to choose a proper power supply that is able to supply the iC880A-SPI and the host system (e.g. Raspberry PI) at the same time.
[/quote]

My issue is, that sometimes packet forwarder needs 2 or 3 efforts to start (after reseting IC880A of course),so as sometimes can’t execute bash script which has to auto run these.

May has to do with power supply (connection between RPi and IC880a made using SPI)?
Or anything else?

Thanks in advance,
Nikos.

Actually, it could be a RPi 3 issue. I had the same issue with a RisingHF shield on a RPi 3, it required a couple of attempts to get it up and running. Please see: https://github.com/raspberrypi/linux/issues/2094.

This was something I too struggled with a lot. I realised after setting up the SPI pins correctly, the RESET PIN on the IMST was the cure. Without using any software approach, try to connect that pin to GNG and VCC and GND again. This should solve the problem.

After conforming if that indeed was the issue, write a python script to do the same. Its GPIO manipulation using Python.

I am confirm that IMST Gateway runs off RPI power completely fine if you power the Rpi with an external Power back with sufficient current. Say, more than 3A.

1 Like

Now, without reason can’t start lora-packet-forwarder on my seeeduino gateway (RPI 3-RHF0M301 [concentrator] - RHF4T002 [bridge] )

I restart infinity times lora-packet-forwarder but always the same : " Execution failed | Does not exist "

The “Does not exist” might give you a hint :wink:

Honestly, no … Since everything is properly connected. I relaunch the configuration of the contractor and so always … when it used to work

Process ‘loraserver’
status OK
monitoring status Monitored
monitoring mode active
on reboot start
pid 303
parent pid 1
uid 0
effective uid 0
gid 0
uptime 1h 12m
threads 15
children 0
cpu 0.3%
cpu total 0.3%
memory 1.5% [14.2 MB]
memory total 1.5% [14.2 MB]
security attribute -
disk read 0 B/s [12.7 MB total]
data collected Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:01:46

Process ‘lora-packet-forwarder’
status Initializing
monitoring status Initializing
monitoring mode active
on reboot start
data collected Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:01:16

Process ‘lora-gateway-bridge’
status OK
monitoring status Monitored
monitoring mode active
on reboot start
pid 278
parent pid 1
uid 0
effective uid 0
gid 0
uptime 1h 11m
threads 10
children 0
cpu 0.0%
cpu total 0.0%
memory 0.8% [7.1 MB]
memory total 0.8% [7.1 MB]
security attribute -
disk read 0 B/s [7.0 MB total]
data collected Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:01:16

Process ‘lora-app-server’
status OK
monitoring status Monitored
monitoring mode active
on reboot start
pid 273
parent pid 1
uid 0
effective uid 0
gid 0
uptime 1h 11m
threads 15
children 0
cpu 0.3%
cpu total 0.3%
memory 1.9% [17.4 MB]
memory total 1.9% [17.4 MB]
security attribute -
disk read 0 B/s [15.1 MB total]
data collected Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:01:16

System ‘raspberrypi3’
status OK
monitoring status Monitored
monitoring mode active
on reboot start
load average [0.29] [0.20] [0.12]
cpu 1.2%us 0.4%sy 0.3%wa
memory usage 44.1 MB [4.8%]
swap usage 0 B [0.0%]
uptime 1h 12m
boot time Wed, 13 Feb 2019 14:48:56
data collected Wed, 13 Feb 2019 16:01:16

Hi,
I also have this issue with the new gateway os image.
Where can i find the start.sh file? I want to update the file in order to restart the concentrator.

do anybody have a solution for that problem? same issue (power adapter 3A for both raspberry3 and ic880a). connection fine. full ready to go image. headache :wink:

any solution? I’ve got a raspberry 3 B+ but it moves form initializing to “Execution failed | Does not exist”…

following link works for me: reset spi -> reset pin to gnd, to 5v, to gnd -> waiting a while and success :smile:

1 Like

Having the same issue. Using the Rak831 devkit. The Rak GW OS works fine and was able to get it connected with LoraServer. I would like to have a GW with a bridge and MQTT for secure communications so getting the LoraServer base image working is preferred. In my case I don’t believe it is pin related but I am looking for any ideas. Also, looking to to set the timezone and would like to get apt running too.

Thanks,
Chuck

Typically you need a distinct script to drive the reset pin GPIO before running the packet forwarder.

Also, some Linux versions have an odd behavior where if you try to export an already exported GPIO, you end up unexporting it! I had to make mine check first.

#!/bin/bash
# Reset iC880a PIN
SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN=PUT_YOUR_GPIO_HERE 
while [ ! -e /sys/class/gpio/gpio$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN ]
do 
    echo trying to export GPIO "$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN" 
    echo "$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN"  > /sys/class/gpio/export
done
echo "out" > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN/direction  
echo "0"   > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN/value 
sleep 0.1  
echo "1"   > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN/value 
sleep 0.1  
echo "0"   > /sys/class/gpio/gpio$SX1301_RESET_BCM_PIN/value

One some hardware it’s okay to release the GPIO and/or let it be an input again, on other hardware that will not lead to reliable operation.