Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

HKPhysicist — Mon, 06 Oct 2025 16:44:02 GMT

2 years have passed, what are the cheapest out-of-box LoraWAN stack internet gateways?

I want to develop my own LoraWAN sensor nodes and integrate all of these into my own cloud service provider.

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 21:06:03 GMT

Irish sea, traffic to Dublin

Oddly, nothing like that in the Mediterranean. A bit between Gibraltar and Tanger. But not the same scale

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 12 Jan 2024 15:38:23 GMT

I detected this pattern, roughly between Brussels and Ghent

Three symmetrical vectors in a LoRa wasteland. They aren't following a road or rail.

I *think* that there are underground gas pipes there. And that each dot represents a control post / valve spot...

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 21:47:20 GMT

Direct traffic between France and England

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 05 Jan 2024 19:59:17 GMT

Heatmap showing extensive use of TTN between Rotterdam and the Total refinery near Hull:

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Tue, 02 Jan 2024 19:01:09 GMT

A 1.5 hour log of Things connecting to my gateway. It's getting traffic.

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Thu, 28 Dec 2023 11:32:02 GMT

My device is working as TTN gateway.

Received data from an Arduino LoRaWAN shield:

Location of the gateway:

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

shabaz — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 22:17:43 GMT

I also decided to try a LoRaWAN node. In the past I've tried the normal Semtech chip (it is sometimes branded HopeRF, it's the same thing from what I can tell). This time I figured I'd give RA08-H a go. It's an interesting module, it contains a ASR6601 wireless MCU with an ARM core (ARM China, and code can build using normal ARM GCC compiler). The ARM core (Cortex-M essentially) is called STAR-MC1.

Code can be successfully built for it (I'll write a blog at some point, but for anyone interested now, the steps I followed are documented here: https://github.com/Ai-Thinker-Open/Ai-Thinker-LoRaWAN-Ra-08

The screenshot here shows pre-built test firmware output, which transmits some dummy data at a user-selectable frequency:

The photo below shows the test setup. Very easy,using a RTL-SDR dongle attached to a mobile phone. The two wires are the antenna. The spectrum view is fast enough to see the burst of the test transmissions.

How can the RA-08H be used for real? I think in two main ways (once the firmware is uploaded to it). One way is simply via UART, using AT commands. That will be great for testing on a PC too, before attaching to a microcontroller. The other way would be to build custom firmware for it, which could result in a standalone device without needing an additional microcontroller. As mentioned, some test programs do build successfully, but I've not tried anything more than that so far. The above was all with the ready-built board, but the RA-08H modules are available for soldering onto custom PCBs. It is attractive if custom firmware can be written (the Semtech and HopeRF chips on the other hand do not contain microcontroller functionality built-in).

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Wed, 27 Dec 2023 19:56:44 GMT

Customer action photo:

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

genebren — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 17:25:15 GMT

Very interesting. I don't have any immediate need for this, but I will have to keep in in mind should a need arise.

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

Jan Cumps — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 11:07:11 GMT

I ordered one. The same bundle: the gateway and the HAT

RE: Low-Cost LoRaWAN Gateways!

dougw — Fri, 15 Dec 2023 05:53:40 GMT

This is very interesting, hopefully it will set the bar for some competitors and allow a lot more gateways to get set up. I might have to start looking for a high location to house a gateway....[emoticon:fbd079a1c4f748c5a234faee215de9cc]