Hello,
I don’t see that much info about this device.
I plan to start play around with Lora to monitor my water meters initially (around 20 water meters).
I haven’t seen a post like this, so for any KNOT LR8G kit users. Are you glad from this gateway choice? Would you buy it again, or something is missing and you’d go with some other device?
I will be happy to hear your experience.
Hi @Adures,
I have one knot LR8 as a LORA gateway (The Things Stack). Got a couple of issues in one of the previous ROS, version 7.20.6 has been running flawlessly.
Thanks, can you tell me in general what were the issues?
I have been running a single KNOT LR8 (not the G). I can testify to @vingjfg experiences.
The issues I saw on earlier versions was that on some of them, (I do not remember the versions) the LoRA radio would somehow lock up and sometimes end up being disabled, resulting in the connection to Things Stack being lost.
I haven't seen this on any of the more recent ROS versions.
Yup, that was the issue. I think it may have been in 7.19, not really sure. Since the move to 7.20, stable as a rock.
Turns out, now the issue is to get the device. It’s out of stock everywhere in my country, at least till February.
I wonder if they are coming out with a new KNOT in same style as
https://mikrotik.com/product/knot_embedded_lte4
which lacks either LR8 or LR9 LoRaWAN support...
This one was shared in another thread, early least year:
Did you get it? I just ordered mine.
Yep, I got it, however other things in life delayed me from continuing the project, so I am just coming back to it.
Looking at the pricing of something like Things Stack (or other SaaS options), it's prohibitively expensive, especially if your country currency is not euro. So i am in design stage trying to figure out what would be the best way to create low maintenance, stable solution for around to just see current and historic usage for water and electricity.
Looking at this Container - ThingsBoard MQTT/HTTP server - RouterOS - MikroTik Documentation I am little bit tempted to try containers in Mikrotik as i have one idle CHR in ovh lying around. It would go lorawan sensors -> Mikrotik KNOT which will forward them as MQTT -> CHR with ThingBoard CE in container.
Above is not tested for viability yet, it might be simpler to scrap CHR just use Ubuntu VM.
Do you use SaaS or roll your own?
I got it, had it running in hours. I tried TTN (it was working fine) but ended up using chirpstack in a ubuntu proxmox VM. Nodered reads the mqtt values and sends them to home assistant.
It's a pretty simple setup for now, i have only two temp/humidity sensors for now. Both are dragino. One in the garage, the other one outside. That's where i stopped, similar as you, lack of time for more. Next step, i will probanly build some hw myself.
I did something similar with the dragino units. I have yet to order some of MirkoTik new "thingies", since I don't need another side-project.
Instead of ChripStack, I ran an ancient Erlang-based "lorawan-sever" and the more hipster NanoMQ in containers. Then wired up it MikroTik MQTT, which uses RouterOS script to parse the Dragino data. Script then log the temp/humidity (which then goes to a Dude syslog in this case).
FWIW, now with /app, you can bring up ChripStack etc more easily on sufficiently powered RouterOS device, although I wished they'd have packaged with SQLite version. And, while can't say for sure, I don't think any of the LoRaWAN gateways are particularly suitable hosts for /app containers. So likely still need a seperate box to run ChripStack if you want the LoRaWAN server to be on-prem/"cloud-less".