Problems getting started with the RAK7243 Pilot Gateway

LPWAN Developer Gateways / Concentrators RAK7243
1

I’m the recipient of a new RAK7243C Pilot Gateway and I’m having difficulty connecting with it.

Firstly, I don’t have an SD reader/writer so I flashed the image at https://downloads.rakwireless.com/en/LoRa/Pilot-Gateway-Pro-RAK7243/Firmware/ to a USB drive. I connected the gateway to HDMI and so I can see that it boots up given lots of console messages. Hard to say if all is well there though as I don’t know what to look for.

I’m not able to see the gateway advertise its SSID via WiFi. Nor am I able to plug an ethernet cable into it and connect to 192.168.10.10 etc. Further, there’s no ethernet light lit up on the gateway.

I really need to get up and running with the gateway given some tight deadlines. Any help is appreciated.

Any ideas?

2

Some more information. I just flashed another USB drive with 2019-07-10-raspbian-buster-lite and it worked just fine with the RAK7243 - both WiFi and ethernet. Could there be some problem with your firmware, or is it that I’m trying to use the USB drive to boot from with your firmware (again, I don’t have an SD reader/writer).

3

When you connect the gateway to power up, you need to wait for a while, and its wifi ssid will appear in your wifi list. Do you see his indicator light is on when you connect the power?

4

I’ve waited for a long time (minutes). I don’t see the SSID appear.

Any other ideas? Thanks.

5

Can you send us photos of this content? We need to identify the problem.

6

Sorry- I didn’t see your message. I shall send some through tomorrow. Thanks.

7

Hi @huntc
First of all the images at https://downloads.rakwireless.com/en/LoRa/Pilot-Gateway-Pro-RAK7243/Firmware/ are made for SD card use.
Here you can find USB flash drives that are not compatible or need to be specially formatted to be used as boot device for Pi https://downloads.rakwireless.com/en/LoRa/Pilot-Gateway-Pro-RAK7243/Firmware/ .

So if you want to use USB flash drive instead of SD card i will suggested you to clean install Raspbian Buster and use this Git RAK Common for Gateways for setting up the gateway.

If you have further questions, feel free to ask :slight_smile:

Regards
Todor Velev

8

Thanks. I will try this first thing tomorrow.

9

Thanks again @velev - you solved my problem.

I think what could improve the experience is to have the SD card factory-formatted.

10

Glad we can help. :slight_smile:
About included SD card, we will consider this suggestion.

Regards
Todor Velev