Faulty MKRWAN1310

Hardware MKR Family MKRWAN1310
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I have tried every other advice I found on the internet, but it seems the MKRWAN1310 is just not able to connect to almost any gateway for many of us.
Other than receiving the first ping on the 'FirstConfiguration' example, I haven't been able to make it join.
I have tried different antennas. TTN and RAK gateways. Different versions of firmware. Different positioning. Different 1310s (I have three). Nada, zil, zich, zero. No communications.
Many, many posts in this forum and others talk about the same issue. I am considering returning it to digikey as faulty, but I don't want to. I really like how neat, clean, and well designed it is (and the fact that it is arduino original) and I really want it to work.
Does anybody have any advice for a desperate engineer?

Thank you!

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Hi,

In reading this I am a little surprised as I got my mkrwan1310 to connect to a gateway and to TTN relatively easily so it suggests you have done something not quite right somewhere in the code. If I ask a few stupid questions first, we can narrow down the area of investigation

  1. Do you have a gateway nearby that you know is connected to TTN - I prefer TTN as it is the one I have used for LoRa.

  2. Have you used an example sketch, if so which one? I think I used https://create.arduino.cc/projecthub/146376/mkr-wan-1310-meets-the-things-network-fff013 first, but you could have used another.

  3. How do you know it is not connecting? Are you getting any error or anything?

  4. I have attached a simple script that I started with and I believe works, it needs an extra file called arduino_secrets.h which lis shown below, it’ll need you bits adding from TTN for it.

#ifndef ARDUINO_SECRETS_H
#define ARDUINO_SECRETS_H

#define     SECRET_APP_EUI          "70XXXXXXXXXXXXB7"
#define     SECRET_APP_KEY          "5AXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX34"

#endif /* ARDUINO_SECRETS_H */

If you post back your results, I’ll be able to try and help further.

main.ino (3.2 KB)

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Hi there. First of all, thank you for your help and your example code.
Answering your questions:

  1. I do have an operational TTN gateway (Kickstarter edition) a few feet away from my desk.
  2. The first thing I used was the examples provided by Arduino on their MKRWAN library: "FirstConfiguration" and "LoraSendAndReceive". Then I did try doing the step by step guide you suggested.
  3. I know the gateway works as I have a registered app with a few devices on it on the same gateway, including TTN's UNO and node, a few Pycom, and a couple of RAK nodes. I even have a working Portenta's vision shield with LoRa. I've tried changing antennas, changing firmware version on the 1310s (I have two), moving the gateway from version 2 to 3, and back, different MKRWAN lib versions. No success.

I have searched for days and while there are some successes like yours, it is my appreciation that there are more failures like mine. I might guess it's a hardware issue. I don't know. I am about to receive a gateway from RAK and I will try again.

If you have any other ideas, I'll be glad to try them out. Otherwise, I will update this post with my results with the RAK gateway.

EDIT: I forgot to mention 'how' I know it doesn't work right.
I do get a ping from the 1310 every time I upload code to it (and do a JoinOTAA in it) but only the first time. The device page on the gateway portal is updated with info from this as an updated 'Last seen' status. A few seconds later, I get an error. Similar behaviour to the one explained here joinOTAA not working on 1310 and US915 · Issue #75 · arduino-libraries/MKRWAN · GitHub

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So a few thoughts, do I take it you are therefore in the USA or at least using their bands?

I’d also note that your assertion that:-

I have searched for days and while there are some successes like yours, it is my appreciation that there are more failures like mine.

Is probably incorrect. I suspect it is more likely that all the people who have issues post on forums and seek help, but for those who it works, don’t publish their success, so the internet is full of failures, but all the working ones are just fine. As an example, I have several units all working fine, all connecting, different ages etc, so I am not convinced it is a hardware fault.

There are different configurations for joinOTAA and there is also joinABP, have you tried them? I have used both, but I don’t have a sample code set for the latter.

hope this helps.

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