RAK 2245 on Raspberry Pi 2B

LPWAN Developer Gateways / Concentrators
1

Hi, I’m trying to get a RAK 2245 hat to work on a Raspberry Pi 2B. My goal is to use it with Meshcore so I’m installing on a fresh install of RaspiOS lite.

I have the GPS portion of the card working correctly with the serial device /dev/ttyAMA0. I don’t see any device created for the Lora radio. Do I need a specific kernel module or other driver software installed?

Once upon a time this exact Pi and RAK hat were working with TTN so I know that it is a functional setup.

Any help would be appreciated.
Thanks.

2

Hi @matthixson,

Currently, there is no dedicated subsystem for LoRa concentrators in the Linux kernel. In practice, this means the concentrator is typically controlled from user space rather than through a kernel driver.

The common approach is to access the hardware interfaces directly using standard Linux interfaces:

  • spidev for SPI communication with the concentrator
  • gpiochip (via libgpiod) for reset, and other control signals

Semtech provides an official HAL implementation for the SX1302-based concentrators which follows this user-space model. You can find it in the LoRa-net GitHub repository - GitHub - Lora-net/sx1302_hal: SX1302/SX1303 Hardware Abstraction Layer and Tools (packet forwarder...) · GitHub

This HAL is widely used as the reference implementation for interacting with the SX1302/SX1303 concentrator from Linux systems.

3

Thanks for the reply. I’m trying to run meshcore-cli, which wants a serial device to connect to. Does any part of that sx1302 HAL provide a serial device, or is it strictly for compiling apps with SX1302 support?

4

Hi @matthixson,

sx1302_hal won’t create a /dev/tty* device. It’s a user-space HAL used by gateway apps/packet forwarders and talks to the concentrator via SPI + GPIO, so you’d typically see /dev/spidev* (and GPIO lines), not a serial port.

meshcore-cli’s serial mode is for connecting to a MeshCore node/repeater that exposes its own CLI/protocol over UART/USB and then calls MeshCore.create_serial...).

So if Meshcore expects a serial-connected radio, a LoRa concentrator HAT like the RAK2245 won’t match that interface. You would need Meshcore hardware/firmware that provides that serial endpoint, or a different integration path than the concentrator HAL.