No matter what I do, I cannot get AU915 to work

[aaroncm (Aaron)]

Issue: Have never been able to get AU915 working. I see join requests and join accepts but the devices never connect via OTAA.

Setup: RAK831 + Converter PCB with GPS (all working properly) and Raspberry Pi. Chirpstack server running on remote VPS.

Basically over the last few months I’ve been using AS923 without issue but I would like to use AU915.

I have a few Arduino MKR WAN 1300 boards and a Dragino sensor. Both will attempt to connect via OTAA and I will see join request uplinks and join accept downlinks but that is as far as it will go, device won’t connect.

I don’t know where to go from here. I have tried going into the chirpstack-network-server.toml and switching from all uplink channels enabled to only allowing 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 65 but it does not help.

The Arduino does not let you set the sub-band but I can only assume it is sub-band 2 for TTN which is used on all Arduino examples.

The Dragino sensor I have is a LHT65 and it is configured for AU915 out of the box. As per the manual it is configured for channel sub-band 2.

I have of course run gateway-config and set AU915.

Would anyone be able to advise what I can try? I am no radio expert.

If I run gateway-config and set AS923, everything I have works flawlessly and everything joins via OTAA in seconds. (After changing device config for AS923)

I am lost.

Edit: Also, I am using this firmware: https://downloads.rakwireless.com/LoRa/RAK2245-Pi-HAT/Firmware/

[cstratton (Chris)]

Check the packet forwarder log and make sure it isn’t rejecting transmissions - you can do that either with something like journalctl or the instructions posted in various threads here for killing the daemon and running it in the foreground instead.

But given how little “decision making” a packet forwarder actually has in the overall system, apart from things like transmission frequency restrictions being mis-set, I’d generally be inclined to suspect a problem with the nodes causing them to not receive the join accepts.

A node firmware such an LMiC which you can modify with debug additions would be a huge help, ie, transmit a join request on a known frequency, see if the node gets the response but ALSO have an rtl-sdr dongle pre-tuned to the appropriate downlink frequency and see that the transmission is made. I forget if the RAK831 has a transmit light but it definitely has RF switch signals on the connector you can monitor with a scope to see when it transmits.

[nmcc (Nick McCloud)]

rtl-sdr and a scope?

[ZhuQI]

AU915 has 72 channels.RAK gateway supports channel 8 to channel 15.If you want to gateway accept nodes from other channels, you need to modify the file /opt/ttn-gateway/packet_forwarder/lora_pkt_fwd/global_conf.json.