IoT Education Kit - Setup the Gateway RAK7268V2

Gateway: Setup and Configuration

Now we are ready to unbox the gateway from the RAK WisBlock. You should identify the RAK’s WisGate gateway, the antenna and the energy adapter.

To avoid damage to the gateway, make sure to connect the antenna before turning it on!

The gateway can now be connected either through Ethernet or Wi-Fi.

If you connect the gateway with Wi-Fi:

The first time you turn on the gateway, it’ll take about 2 minutes to boot. After that, you will find a Wi-Fi connection with SSID RAK7268_XXXX, where the last four characters represent the last two bytes of the MAC address. This will be working in Wi-Fi AP, meaning you’ll be able to connect to it.

• The first time you turn on the gateway, it’ll take about 2 minutes to boot. After that, you will find a Wi-Fi connection with SSID RAK7268_XXXX, where the last four characters represent the last two bytes of the MAC address. This will be working in Wi-Fi AP, meaning you’ll be able to connect to it.

Choose your favorite browserand introduce the gateway’s address 192.168.230.1. You will be prompted with the gateway’s console, where you need to log in by creating a password. Use something practical and memorable, we suggest using r00t+r00t+r00t (0=zero);

• Choose your favorite browserand introduce the gateway’s address 192.168.230.1. You will be prompted with the gateway’s console, where you need to log in by creating a password. Use something practical and memorable, we suggest using r00t+r00t+r00t (0=zero);

• Now some initial setup is required. First, choose your country and the appropriate region (should be automatically allocated for the country);

• The gateway is ready to be connected to the “outside world”. To do so, you should:
• Navigate to the network menu, open the WAN option and then the Wi-Fi settings:

• Press “Enabled” and then “Scan” for available Wi-Fi connections (be patient, it may take a while!). Select your preferred network, introduce its password and “Save”

• If the connection is successful (at least 30 sec wait time), the console should display something similar to this:

• CAUTION: You should access the “LAN” menu (which is your “internal world”) and place restrictions on the chosen network (either implement a password or hide/make it invisible):

The gateway is now set up and configured (to the most basic level, you may personalize it if you wish). As a next step, we will connect it to TTN, but first we must generate an API key to proceed with this connection. These steps will guide you on this process:

(Re)Log-in to your TTN account that was created previously, and open the console (refer to the image on the previous unit);

• (Re)Log-in to your TTN account that was created previously, and open the console (refer to the image on the previous unit);
• Press the “Gateways” tab and then “Register Gateway”

• You will be prompted to enter the “Gateway EUI”

You may find this code on the bottom of the gateway, on the line “GWEUI”. This code is an exclusive 64 bit identifier for the gateway, created by the producer and cannot be altered.After inserting the EUI, several more data is needed. Consider the following to contextualize these fields:

• Gateway name is optional and up to you;
• The frequency plan dictates the plan to be used by the gateway. You should select the Europe 863-870 MHz (SF9 for RX2 - recommended). Although some other models support the other european channels, do not select them because it is not allowed by this particular gateway!
• SF (in the frequency plan) stands for Spreading Factor and controls the amount of spreading of the signal in the time domain. It has a direct impact on the sensibility of the receptor and data transfer rate: a low value (like SF7) has a higher transfer rate at the cost of lower reach and sensibility, while a high value (like SF12) has much more sensibility and range, but with a slim transfer rate.
• The Share Status/Location option boxes at the end are useful if we want that other people benedict from our gateway, by providing its working status or its exact location;

• After pressing the “Register Gateway” button at the end of the page, a successful registration will prompt the following window:

• To generate the token and the API key, simply open the “API Key” tab on the left menu and press the “Add API key” button on the top right:

You will have to create a name for the key (can be simple, like “mykey” in the example). On the “Rights” options select “Grant individual rights”, and out of the selection that appears you only need to check the box “Link as Gateway to a Gateway Server for traffic exchange”.You may then proceed to create the API token.CAUTION:Copy the key and save it on a text document right away. You won’t be able to access it after the window is closed, and it will be needed to set up the connection to the gateway.

Connection of our gateway to TTN

Great! Now we can finalize the connection of our gateway to TTN. (Re)Open the gateway’s console like before, open the “Configuration” panel and proceed like in the image below:

a) Select the option “Basic Station” and, to connect our Gateway with TTN, activate the LoRaWAN Network Server by selecting the “LNS Server” option. In the Server URL field, enter the European cluster of TTN: wss://eu1.cloud.thethings.network and insert port 8887.

b) Expand the “Authentication Mode” field and select the option “TLS Server & Client token Authentication” (this is the token that you just generated on the TTN website when registering the Gateway).

c) For the “Trust (CA Certificate)” field, paste the following link on your browser https://letsencrypt.org/certs/isrgrootx1.pem to download the isrgrootx1.pem file. Once it is saved to disk, upload the “.pem” file.

d) Finally, in the “Client Token” field, enter our APIkey

If you turn back to the TTN website, in your console on the “Gateways” panel, you can check that your gateway is connected!

Please ensure that António Valente, the project leader, is added as a collaborator with full permissions. His user ID is 'antoniovalente'.

Go to “Collaborators” and then click on Add Collaborator button📷

Then add antoniovalente in “Collaborator*” field, select “Grant all current and future rights” and finalize by clicking “Add collaborator”.

To end this module, let us update the firmware in our gateway. First, you may install the updated firmware on your disk by accessing the following pageon RAK’s website, and selecting the RAK7268 V2 firmware link.

On the gateway’s console, go to the “Settings” panel and select the “Firmware” tab. Here you can upload the .rwi file from the zip folder you just downloaded (see image below).

After pressing the “Update” button, be patient as the download may take up to 5-10 minutes!