Pygate, gpy and LoRa Failures

[netskink]

So we bought two more pycom devices. This time a pygate and a gpy.

The plan was to have an out of the box lora to wifi gateway which talks to ttn.

As is, it would relay messages from lora nodes to ttn using wifi. However, messages from ttn to the pygate and then to a lora connected node seldom worked. Perhaps 90% of the time ttn would send to the pygate and the pygate never sent it to the lora device a few steps away.

As a result, I thought perhaps I should update the firmware. After updating firmware, lora is non existent. So what did I do?

Update pygate firmware

1. remove the usb connection. ie. unplug the device/expansion board.
2. remove the gpy development module from the pygate expansion board.
3. hold button to left of plastic connector
4. reconnect the pygate expansion board
5. wait 1 second
6. release button
7. run lsusb until the pygate microchip device is shown
8. Run the firmware update tool as sudo dfu-util -VD pygate_v13_1049665.dfu

This seemed to work and did not raise an error.

Update gpy firmware

1. Disconnect gpy. (Remove USB cable connecting gpy from laptop)
2. Re-insert the gpy module in the pygate expansion board
3. Flash the gpy with the pygate firmware?
   pycom-fwtool-cli -p /dev/ttyACM0 flash -t GPy-1.20.3.b3.tar.gz

This also seemed to work and did not raise an error.

I re-uploaded the pgate sample for ttn which I had working previously. It fails in a different way now. It seems that lora is not enabled.

In a console for the device, from network import LoRa fails. You can import network and then if you type network. and hit tab it will expand to show wifi and lte, but not LoRa as components of network library.

Any advice?

[netskink]

@jcaron Yes, I believe that is the problem. Well, the problem is my reading comphrension level. The page which links to the second page above lands the reader at the wifi part. i scrolled up to the part on Network.LoRa. I believe that by scrolling up to top of page its showing how you setup an end device. My bad. My mistake.

[jcaron]

@netskink did LoRa exist in the firmware before the upgrade? I don’t have a Pygate but it is my understanding that the LoRa object is for the client side, not the gateway side, and it’s not available on a Pygate anyway.

The example code does not use the LoRa object at all (the one in the tutorial anyway).