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LoRa/LoRaWAN Gateway Kit

LoRa is a perfect long-range wireless solution to create low-power, wide area networks.So far we have released several “LoRa” boards such as Seeeduino LoRaWan and Grove LoRa Radio ,etc. There is also ready-to-use SenseCAP M2 Multi-Platform LoRaWAN Indooor Gateway available for users.However if you want to build you own LoRa network, there are 3 things that you should prepare to get started: a Gateway, at least one Node and a local server where you can monitor all your devices.

This kit provides all the basic elements you need: a Raspberry Pi 3, a Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS and a gateway & local server that allows you to collect and transfer data among all your LoRa nodes. By connecting the gateway with Seeeduino LoRaWAN and Grove modules, you can build your IOT prototype within minutes.

Regarding the gateway module RHF0M301, it is a 10 channel(8 x Multi-SF + 1 x Standard LoRa + 1 x FSK) LoRaWan gateway moduel with a 24pin DIP port on board, users can easily connect the RHF0M301 with PRI 2 bridge RHF4T002, adapter for Raspberry Pi 3 and RHF0M301. We also included a 868MHz antenna, an 8GB SD card and USB cables, Ethernet Cables and other accessories.

caution

Please always plug 3.7V Lipo battery in case USB power supply is not sufficient. We use 868MHZ kit in this wiki, but this wiki works for both 868MHz kit and 915MHz kit.

868MHz Kit for Raspberry Pi 3
915MHz Kit for Raspberry Pi 3

Features​

  • Low power consumption & wide area
  • Industrial standard reliability
  • Economic solution to build LoRa /LoRaWAN network
  • Rich Accessories of sensor and actuator
  • Real time monitoring

Hardware Overview​

Partlist​

Parts numberParts nameQuantity
❶Raspberry Pi 31 PCS
❷Gateway module RHF0M301–8681 PCS
❸PRI 2 Bridge RHF4T0021 PCS
❹Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS (RHF76-052AM)1 PCS
❺USB to UART Adapter1 PCS
❻upgrade to 16GB Micro SD Card – Class 101 PCS
❼0dBi Rubber Duck Antenna1 PCS
❽5V/2.1A American Standard Adapter with Micro USB Connector1 PCS
❾Micro USB Cable 20cm1 PCS
❿Micro USB Cable 100cm1 PCS
⓫RJ45 Ethernet Cable 200cm1 PCS
⓬JST2.0 Cable 10cm1 PCS

Application Ideas​

  • Internet of Things
  • Smart House
  • Security
  • Smart Grid
  • Intelligent Farm
  • Intelligent Park

Getting Started​

Hardware​

Interfaces overview​

Since there are many interfaces here, it is necessary to know the capabilities of these interfaces. Please refer to the following figure for details.

  • ❶ Micro-USB Input:The whole system use this Micro-USB interface for power supply.
  • ❷ USB HOST Connector:Output power to supply for Raspberry Pi
  • ❸ Raspberry Pi power input: Input power for Raspberry.
  • ❹ HDMI: HD digital video output interface.
  • ❺ Headphone jack: 3.5mm Headphone jack
  • ❻ Ethernet interface: You can use the Ethernet interface to connect this system to the Internet. Or you can use Wifi after you configured the wireless network.

Hardware connection​

  • Step 1. Plug Gateway module RHF0M301–868 into PRI 2 Bridge RHF4T002.
  • Step 2. Plug PRI 2 Bridge RHF4T002 into Raspberry Pi 3.
  • Step 3. Connect ❷ and ❸ via the 20cm Micro-USB cable.
  • Step 4. Connect the USB to UART Adapter to the GPIO of Raspberry Pi 3. Please connect them as the picture shown below.

  • Step 5. Plug the USB to UART Adapter into your PC.
  • Step 6. Connect ❶ with 5V/2.1A Standard Adapter via 100cm Micro-USB cable.

When you finished all the steps, the whole system should be like the picture below.

Software​

Software Tool​

In the following guide, below tools will be needed, please install it to your computer.

  • Arduino, portable serial tool, used to open the serial port of Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS (RHF76-052AM) and send AT commands to it.
  • PuTTY, terminal tool include both serial and SSH terminal, used to control Raspberry Pi.
  • Internet browser, used to access RHF2S001 integrated LoRaWAN server (It is recommended to use Chrome or Firefox).
note

You may have your other favorite serial tools,of cause you can use them.However if you are not sure about your tools.Please use the ones we recommend.

Connect To Local Server​

Step 1. Power up and connect to putty​

a) First, make sure the serial tool and RPi (RHF4T002 Adapter) are connected correctly.

b) Plug FT232 tool to PC (If COM port is not recognized correctly, please refer to Virtual COM Port Drivers)

c) Open Device Manager of your PC to get the right COM port. Like COM15 for example. Configure ExtraPuTTY according to below picture (Speed 115200, others use defaults), click Open. As the gateway is still not opened, so there is nothing in the terminal.

d) Power the gateway up. Booting log will be showed in the PuTTY terminal, in the end it will prompt you to input your log in name. Please note it takes 1 or 2 minutes to get the prompt information.

e) Please use RHF2S001 default user name and password to log in. ( Username: rxhf, Password: risinghf ). Note, when input the password, there is no any echo

f) Connect RHF2S001 with router through ethernet cable

g) Run ifconfig to check the ip address and mac address.

IP is in the blue square, MAC address is in orange square (Format: b8:27:eb:xx:xx:xx)​
note

After you get the IP, it is recommended to login RHF2S001 again through SSH. Because SSH is faster (Ethernet than UART) and stable. We normally use serial tool to get the IP. Reopen PuTTY, use the SSH module to connect again.

To login through SSH, you need to fill in the Hostname with the IP address you've just got.And use port 22,choose the SSH connection type. Just leave the other options by default. Then simply click Open.

Step 2. Expand SD Card File System​

By default, the image enables only 2GB for Raspbian System, it is recommended to expand to use the whole SD card (8GB or 16GB). Or the SD card will be full soon. Run below command in the PuTTY terminal to start raspi-config, 

sudo raspi-config

Choose “Expand Filesystem”, when finished reboot to make it effect. Run below command in the PuTTY terminal to know the SD card capacity and usage.

df -h

Please refer to Raspberry Pi raspi-config tool instruction for details.Click here see more.

Step 3. Use RHF2S001 integrated LoRaWAN server​

a) Connect Gateway with internal server

Run below commands in the PuTTY terminal, and check the status:

sudo systemctl status pktfwd

If pktfwd service is not active, run below command to start it:

sudo systemctl enable pktfwd
sudo systemctl restart pktfwd

b) Frequency Plan

Frequency Plan for EU868

EU868Uplink DR
CH0867.1DR0 ~ DR5
CH1867.3DR0 ~ DR5
CH2867.5DR0 ~ DR5
CH3867.7DR0 ~ DR5
CH4867.9DR0 ~ DR5
CH5868.1DR0 ~ DR5
CH6868.3DR0 ~ DR5
CH7868.5DR0 ~ DR5

Frequency Plan for US915 HYBRID

US915Uplink DR
CH0902.3DR0 ~ DR3
CH1902.5DR0 ~ DR3
CH2902.7DR0 ~ DR3
CH3902.9DR0 ~ DR3
CH4903.1DR0 ~ DR3
CH5903.3DR0 ~ DR3
CH6903.5DR0 ~ DR3
CH7903.7DR0 ~ DR3
CH64903.0DR4

c) RHF76-052AM Settings

Now let's configure the Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS (RHF76-052AM).

  • Firstly, you need to connect Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS to your PC.

  • Secondly, open the Arduino IDE, and copy the code blew into a new skech.

 void setup()
 {
     Serial1.begin(9600);
     SerialUSB.begin(115200);
 }

 void loop()
 {
     while(Serial1.available())
     {
         SerialUSB.write(Serial1.read());
     }
     while(SerialUSB.available())
     {
         Serial1.write(SerialUSB.read());
     }
 }
  • Then choose the right serial port of Seeeduino Lora GPS, and choose the board Tool->Board->Seeeduino_LoRAWAN. After that you can click the upload button.If you can not find Seeeduino_LoRAWAN in the board list or do not know how to update the code,please click here for more information.

  • Now please open the serial monitor in the upper right corner ( or you can press Ctrl+Shift+M at the same time ).Choose Newline (This option will add "\r\n" at the end of each command.), set the baud rate 9600.Then tap the commands below and press send.

For EU868

AT+FDEFAULT=RISINGHF
AT+DR=EU868

For US915

 AT+FDEFAULT=RISINGHF
 AT+DR=US915HYBRID
 AT+RXWIN2=923.3,DR8

caution

After you plug Seeeduino LoRaWAN with GPS into your computer, you may find two serial Ports. One is for raspeberry with putty, one is for Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS with SSCOM, please choose the right one.

d) Access Internal Server Console

Fill your browser with the IP address(IP of your gateway) ,it Will jump to the website below.

Step 4. Use Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS(RHF76-052AM) access LoRaWAN server​

There are two modes,in this wiki we only talk about the ABP Mode(This Mode is free for anyone),for more information about OTAA Mode(This model is commercial, you need to pay for it),you can click here.

a) Find the "Application" button in the upper right corner of the website above, click it and you will see a new page.

b) Now you need APPEui,DevAddr,DevEui of Seeeduino LoRaWAN to add a new application. In order to get the ID information of Seeeduino LoRaWAN, you need to tap the command below in the serial monitor of Arduino IDE.Click Send, you will get the ID then.

at+id

c) Fill in the blank with the ID info. you just get. You can fill in the name and owner as your wish (here we use Seeed and my nick name：), use the APPEui you've just got. Then click Add button.

Then you will jump into the configure page. In this page, we choose Personalised Motes. Fill in the DevEUI and DevAddr with ID info. of your Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS. And set the NWKSKEY and APPSKEY by default. You can refer to the picture below.

  • DevEui： Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS get through AT+ID command
  • DevAddr: Seeeduino LoRaWAN GPS get through AT+ID command
  • NWKSKEY：Default value 2B7E151628AED2A6ABF7158809CF4F3C
  • APPSKEY：Default value 2B7E151628AED2A6ABF7158809CF4F3C

d) To test whether you add the device successfully, you can use the serial monitor of Arduino IDE tap the command below.

at+mode=lwabp

AT+CMSGHEX="0a 0b 0c 0d 0e"

It should like something below.

Then turn to the website, click Application->Seeed(the name of the Application you just added)->View application data, you will see the data you've just sent form the Seeeduino_LoRAWAN. congratulations! Job done!

Connect To Loriot Server​

Step.1 Loriot Server Gateway Registration​

a) New user need register an account first, click registration address . Fill in UserName, Password and email address to register, after registration an email will be sent to you, please follow the instruction in the email to activate.

b) After successful activation, click here to log in. Default tier is “Community Network”, it supports 1 Gateway (RHF2S001) and 10 nodes.

c) Enter Dashboard -> Gateway, click Add Gateway start to add Gateway.

d) Select Raspberry Pi 3

e) Set as below:

  • Radio front-end -> RHF2S001 868/915 MHz(SX1257)
  • BUS -> SPI

f) Fill in the MAC address of your RHF2S001, should be in format of b8:27:eb:xx:xx:xx. And also input Gateway Location information.

g) Click “Register Raspberry Pi gateway” to finish the registration.

h) Click the registered gateway to enter configuration page, switch “Frquency Plan” manually, your plan here is decided by the type of your RHF2S001 type, available plan are CN470，CN473， CN434，CN780，EU868, after selected please refresh the page to get the exact channel.In this wiki we choose EU868.

i) Run the command in the putty terminal：

cd /home/rxhf/loriot/1.0.2
sudo systemctl stop pktfwd
sudo gwrst
wget https://cn1.loriot.io/home/gwsw/loriot-risinghf-rhf2s008-rhf1257-SPI-0-latest.bin -O loriot-gw.bin
chmod +x loriot-gw.bin
./loriot-gw.bin -f -s cn1.loriot.io

j) Finish gateway registration. You will see the gateway is Connected now. Next is to register node.

Step 2. Loriot Server Connect Node device​

a) Get the available gateway channels

Current gateway channels could be got from Dashboard -> Gateway -> Your Gateway , you can see the available channels as the picture below.

b) Seeeduino LoRAWAN GPS(RHF3M076) Configuration

Open the serial monitor of Arduino IDE, tap the command below.

at+ch

To confirm the default channel of your Seeeduino_LoRAWAN GPS, you will get 3 channels. If there is no available channel, you can change the channels of Seeeduino_LoRAWAN by the command below.

at+ch=0,868.1
at+ch=1,868.3
at+ch=2,868.5

Then you can use at+ch again to check.

c) Add Seeeduino_LoRAWAN GPS as an ABP Node

Log in Loriot server , Click Dash Board->Applications->SimpleApp . Click Import ABP ，input below items：

  • DevAddr: Seeeduino_LoRAWAN GPS get through "AT+ID" command (Note: Loriot doesn't support colon connector, need remove manually)
  • FCntUp：Set to 1
  • FCntDn：Set to 1
  • NWKSKEY：Default value 2B7E151628AED2A6ABF7158809CF4F3C
  • APPSKEY：Default value 2B7E151628AED2A6ABF7158809CF4F3C
  • EUI：DEVEUI, Seeeduino_LoRAWAN GPS get through "AT+ID" command

Click Import Device button to finish the device import. Now choose Dashboard -> Applications -> SampleApp , you will see the new ABP Node you've just added.

d) Send data from Seeeduino_LoRAWAN

Back to serial monitor of Arduino IDE, send command:

AT+CMSGHEX="0a 0b 0c 0d 0e"

Then go to Dashboard -> Applications -> SampleApp ->Device , click the Node Device EUI or DevAddr, you will find the data you've just sent here.

.

Summary​

This article has intruoduced LoRa/LoRaWAN Gateway Kit and the process of creating your own LoRaWAN gateway. We covered key steps in hardware connection and software tools configuration, including connecting necessary components and communicating with the LoRaWAN server. This DIY gateway method offers flexibility and customization, allowing users to build a robust LoRaWAN network according to their needs.

However, for some users, creating their own LoRaWAN gateway can be challenging, and they prefer ready-to-use devices. We understand this demand and offer the option of the SenseCAP M2 Multi-Platform LoRaWAN Indoor Gateway. For just $99, you can purchase this gateway to build your own LoRaWAN network effortlessly.Going a step further, we also provide SenseCAP LoRaWAN Starter kit tailored for beginners who are exploring LoRaWAN. This kit includes a SenseCAP M2 Multi-Platform LoRaWAN Indoor Gateway, XIAO ESP32-S3, Grove-Wio-E5, and two Grove sensors. It is specifically designed to facilitate the learning process and experimentation with LoRaWAN.

FAQs​

Q1: How to find the factory firmware?

A1: When the firmware is broken or some terrible errors happen, you can download the firmware here. It is for raspberry 3b only, NOT support raspberry 3b +.

Q2: How to build the latest image?

A2: It works well with both raspberry 3b and 3b+. We tested it under 2018-11-13 raspbian image.

  • Step 1. Download the latest raspberry image

  • Step 2. Download libssl1.0.0.deb to your Raspberry Pi by running wget https://files.seeedstudio.com/wiki/LoRaWAN_Gateway-868MHz_Kit_with_Raspberry_Pi_3/res/libssl1.0.0.deb, and run sudo dpkg -i ./libssl1.0.0.deb to install it in terminal.

  • Step 3. Run sudo raspi-config in terminal, select Interfacing Options -- P4 SPI -- YES to enable SPI, so that Raspberry Pi can communicate with RHF0M301.

  • Step 4. Run following commands in terminal, download and start loriot gateway.

wget https://cn1.loriot.io/home/gwsw/loriot-pi-3-rhf1257-SPI-0-latest.bin -O loriot-gw
chmod +x loriot-gw
./loriot-gw -f

Resources​

Projects​

LoRa IoTea: An automatic information collection system applied to tea plantation. It is part of intelligent agricultural information collection.

Tech Support & Product Discussion​

Thank you for choosing our products! We are here to provide you with different support to ensure that your experience with our products is as smooth as possible. We offer several communication channels to cater to different preferences and needs.

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