RAK2245 - Poor RSSI

fguiet · March 8, 2020, 8:20pm

Just received and set up my Rak2245 PiHat. Everything runs fine but I get a very poor RSSI signal.
The LoRa Node is in the same room than the Rak2245 and this is what I get from The Thing Network

{
“gw_id”: “eui-dca632fffe365d9c”,
“payload”: “QE4TASaAFwABD4werlsRtVnaY9DsDHRl5qI=”,
“f_cnt”: 23,
“lora”: {
“spreading_factor”: 7,
“bandwidth”: 125,
“air_time”: 61696000
},
“coding_rate”: “4/5”,
“timestamp”: “2020-03-08T20:18:50.375Z”,
“rssi”: -126,
“snr”: -3.8,
“dev_addr”: “2601134E”,
“frequency”: 867700000
}

The antenna is good on the both side (Rak2245 and LoRa Node => Dragino)…

What can be the problem?

Thank you,
Fred

velev · March 8, 2020, 10:04pm

Can you give some pictures of the setup? Mainly antenna part.

fguiet · March 9, 2020, 7:44am

Hi,

Thank for replying.
Here is more information about my configuration:

RAK7244 LoRaWAN® Developer Gateway (EU868 version without LTE) - Firmware 4.1
Dragino Lora Shield v1.4 + Arduino Uno

I am using this code on the Arduino Uno side

github.com

dragino/arduino-lmic/blob/master/examples/ttn-abp/ttn-abp.ino

/*******************************************************************************
 * Copyright (c) 2015 Thomas Telkamp and Matthijs Kooijman
 *
 * Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to anyone
 * obtaining a copy of this document and accompanying files,
 * to do whatever they want with them without any restriction,
 * including, but not limited to, copying, modification and redistribution.
 * NO WARRANTY OF ANY KIND IS PROVIDED.
 *
 * This example sends a valid LoRaWAN packet with payload "Hello,
 * world!", using frequency and encryption settings matching those of
 * the The Things Network.
 *
 * This uses ABP (Activation-by-personalisation), where a DevAddr and
 * Session keys are preconfigured (unlike OTAA, where a DevEUI and
 * application key is configured, while the DevAddr and session keys are
 * assigned/generated in the over-the-air-activation procedure).
 *
 * Note: LoRaWAN per sub-band duty-cycle limitation is enforced (1% in
 * g1, 0.1% in g2), but not the TTN fair usage policy (which is probably

This file has been truncated. show original

My antennas are ok (868Mhz version on both side). I have got 2 Dragino Nodes and I tested them using P2P LoRa configuration and RSSI is ok…I am afraid but I think there is a problem on the Rak2245 PiHat. The LoRa chip seems to be blown/out of order…

What’s the procedure to exchange a Rak2245 PiHat from Rakwireless ? How can I contact them?

Thank,
Fred

Here is some pictures of my configuration:

fguiet · March 9, 2020, 6:23pm

I found the problem…they send me the 915Mhz version instead of the 868 Mhz…See the resistor on the photo?

What can I do now??

Fred

Fomi · March 10, 2020, 2:57am

Hi @fguiet,

You can contact with [email protected] to exchange a 868MHz RAK2245.

fguiet · March 10, 2020, 9:05am

Thank you for answering…I have just sent an email to [email protected] … Hope Rakwireless will send me a new 868MhZ RAK2245 as they did make the mistake

Regards,
Fred