In this article I create a LoRaWAN gateway using a RAK Wireless RAK2245 Pi HAT LoRa Concentrator and a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+. The gateway is registered on The Things Network.

This article is the first in a series:

• LoRaWAN Gateway: RAK2245, Raspberry Pi 3B+ & TTN
• RAK7204 LoRaWAN Node & The Things Network
• RAK2245 LoRaWAN Gateway With An Outdoor Antenna
• LoRaWAN Gateway: Coverage Measurement With TTN Mapper
• LoRaWAN Gateway: TTN Integration With AWS IoT

In this article I get the gateway up and going in most basic form: indoors with no enclosure. Later articles cover outdoor antenna installation and improving the range and coverage.

Why RAK2245 & RPi 3B+?

In this world of things, and the internet of things, the holy US retail tradition of Black Friday has become a thing down under. The magnificent IOT Store, that happens to be in my city, was having a Black Friday sale. RAK Wireless seem to make lots of great stuff and the RAK2245 was going cheap. One limb instead of the normal two. I had a spare RPi 3B+ laying around and I was in a mood. I didn’t want to just buy a fully-assembled off-the-shelf gateway. Building my own gateway, even when just following the RAK guide, gives more scope for learning. Vamos!

References

Some great guides I’ve followed:

• https://www.thethingsnetwork.org/docs/gateways/rak2245/
• https://downloads.rakwireless.com/en/LoRa/RAK2245-Pi-HAT/Application-Notes/Get_Start_with_RAK2245%26RAK831_RPi_LoRa_Gateway.pdf

I’m not going to reproduce their details in my article.

RAK2245 Unboxing

Besides the HAT itself, you get basic LoRa and GPS antennas and a bag of stand-offs.

Assembly

Assembly is trivial. The guides strongly advise to attach the antennas before powering up.

Firmware & SD Card

You can take the low road or the high road:

• Flash your SD card with the pre-built image from RAK: https://downloads.rakwireless.com/en/LoRa/RAK2245-Pi-HAT/Firmware/
• OR
• Flash your SD card with a vanilla Raspbian and follow the instructions on RAK’s Github repository: https://github.com/RAKWireless/RAK2245-RAK831-LoRaGateway-RPi-Raspbian-OS

Don’t labour the decision. It’s not important.

Gateway Configuration

Per the referenced guides, you need to SSH into the Raspberry Pi. Then start the configuration tool.

sudo gateway-config

See the referenced setup guides for details. You need to do the password, WiFi and LAN stuff.

For the WiFi, I think you should change it from AP Mode to Client Mode so that an attacker can’t get to your gateway over WiFi.

Consider also to put your gateway on your guest network or DMZ to keep it away from your other network devices. In the unlikely event that an attacker breaches the LoRaWAN interface to get into the gateway, they can’t access the rest of your network.

The most interesting part is the setup of the concentrator. I selected The Things Network as my server and AU915MHz as my channel plan.

The Things Network Registration

Login to your TTN account, go the console and register your gateway.

You should quickly find that your gateway is connected to TTN and pinging every 30 seconds.