Issue:Need to verify RAK2287 with Pi Hat uses SPI interface / NOT USB and reset is on PIN17
Setup: Raspberry Pi Hat with RAK2287 US915 running Pi Buster and ThingsNetwork BasicStation
Server: Things Network V3
Details: RAK software on GitHub only shows USB support for RAK2287, is there a tested reference configuration available for the RAK2287 with BasicStation?
Hello @bdeffler,
Need to verify RAK2287 with Pi Hat uses SPI interface / NOT USB and reset is on PIN17
The reset pin is indeed 17. As for the interface, depends on what you buy from the store:
In the RAK GitHub repo, if you look closely at option 7 and 8, you will see that it supports RAK2287 SPI variant as well. The RAK7248 is based on RAK2287 SPI:
Thanks for the response. I confirmed I have the SPI version (attached jpg). I have assumed that the device has preloaded chip firmware. Referring to RAK WisLink LPWAN Documentation Center, the firmware V4.2.5_20200909 is a raspberry pi image, this image is not compatible with the The Things Network V3 gateway (their gateway configuration no longer has packet forwarder option) and appears to rely on V2 packet forwarder interface. I would like to find a test suite that runs on the raspberry pi and runs the diagnostics (factory test) for the RAK2287 - SPI version. I would also like to confirm that the RAK2287 chip firmware comes preloaded from the factory and if not, where to get the latest version (github???). My end goal is to run The Things Network BasicStation - corecell (example?), but most of the documentation that I have found is either old or incomplete. At this point, I am unable to determine if it’s a RAK / Pi issue or The Things Network.
Thank you…
Hello Bruce,
Solely, the RAK2287 has nothing to do with the firmware. The firmware is flashed on the SD card of the Raspberry Pi.
It is true, that the RAK2287 documentation is old, but soon it will be updated.
In the mean time, you can find the latest RAK2287 firmware here and a guide on how to flash it on the SD card here.
The configuration of the gateway and the Network are the same.
If you want to run Basics Station, you can check this article here on how to do it.
I have RAK2287 running as part of basicstation. I downloaded the SD card image and found rak2287_spi source. Using that source I put it under basicstation/deps/lgw1302 and renamed it platform-carecell. A couple of changes to get it to compile LBT_LGW_ISSUE definition wasn’t found and the tinymt32 not being pulled into the library correctly, the final error I found was associated with I2C in libgw_hal.c wanting temperature on port 0x39 that returned a HAL failure and prevented startup. For the moment this was commented out and the basicstation starts and runs. I didn’t find any mention of a temperature sensor on either the pi-hat or 2287 if there is, does it have a different port address? I also found mention of a rak2287.tar.gz, but not found on github, but was downloaded from the forum. I’ll check that out using the above procedures to see if it works. The RAK sd image doesn’t work nor the docker solution for my purposes, the tight integration to basicstation is certainly doable. We’re attempting to integrate the RAK product with a drone beacon/tracking reporting - see https://dronebeacon.info if your’e curious.
Thanks.
There is no temperature sensor in the 2287, this is a major difference from the Semtech reference design for the 1302 chip and means that you need to comment out or otherwise have a runtime configuration option to disable any code which tries to query one, as it will simply receive an I2C timeout. You’ll need to substitute a guessed or otherwise measured temperature - really of the radio front end chips, not the system as a whole.
Got it… works well connection to The Things Network.
Thanks for confirmation.