Configuring Two LoRa Cards on a Conduit

The following instructions are for use with AEP firmware 1.7.x, for mPower firmware there are UI options available for dual card configuration

Two LoRa cards can be installed on the same Conduit for the use cases listed below. Additional configuration is required.
Following these instructions will not allow further configuration through the AEP UI.

Important: The Conduit must be version MTCDT-24x or greater with MTAC-LORA-1.5 accessory cards. You cannot install two LoRa accessory cards on earlier versions of the Conduit.

SPI Device paths:

Set config key in “gateway_conf” section for each card. This will link the configuration to each physical card. If not supplied the default spi0.0 device in AP1 will be used.
AP1 => “spi_device”: “/dev/spidev32766.2”
AP2 => “spi_device”: “/dev/spidev32765.2”

Example Configurations

Packet forwarder configuration file examples can be found at the following links:

 

Diversity 8-channel operation

Run two packet forwarder instances with identical channel configurations. Make sure that the gateway_ID setting is changed for each card.

  • Card 1 – 902.3-903.7=>Radio 0 : 902.7 Radio 1: 903.5
  • Card 2 – 902.3-903.7=>Radio 0 : 902.7 Radio 1: 903.5

16-channel operation

 Run two packet forwarder instances with offset channel configurations. Make sure that the gateway_ID setting is changed for each card.

  • Card 1 – 902.3-903.7=>Radio 0 : 902.7 Radio 1: 903.5
  • Card 2 – 903.9-905.3=>Radio 0 : 904.3 Radio 1: 905.1

If you choose frequency subband 1 and 8 for card 1 and card 2 respectively, then the configurations are:

  • Card 1: frequency subband 1: radio_0: 902700000 ,radio_1: 903500000
  • Card 2: frequency subband 8: radio_0: 913900000, radio_1: 914700000

Reference modifications for AEP using angel process to monitor/restart packet forwarder

Init Script
Global Config

  • Disable network-server changing enabled in /etc/default/lora-network-server to “no”
  • Enable packet forwarder changing enabled in /etc/default/lora-packet-forwarder to “yes”
  • Copy init script to /etc/init.d/lora-packet-forwarder
  • Ensure init script has execute permissions $ chmod +x /etc/init.d/lora-packet-forwarder
  • Copy global config to /var/config/lora/global_conf_1.json and /var/config/lora/global_conf_2.json
  • Change global_conf_1.json and global_conf_2.json radio_0 and radio_1 as desired FSB1:902.7/903.5 FSB2:904.3/905.1

TTN Packet Forwarder with dual-cards

TTN Packet Forwarder installer
Download the following tarball and copy to the conduit. Script to modify the TTN installer files.
A README file can be found in the tarball.

TTN Dual Card MTS PKT FWD (1510 downloads )