Hardware and Operating System Prerequisites
The VarIoT Gateway is an amalgamation of both open-source hardware and front-end, open-source software. Before diving into the Setup instructions found in this instance of ReadTheDocs, it is important the end-user posses the appropriate hardware and operating system (OS) for proper functionality of the VarIoT gateway.
Hardware
The VarIoT gateway shall be instantiated on a Raspberry Pi 4B, or Raspberry Pi Compute Model 4. Models older than the Raspberry Pi 4B do not have adequate RAM to run the ThingsBoard service.
A corresponding microSD card must also be used in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi in order to store the operating system. A minimum of 32 GB is highly recommended.
Operating System
An Ubuntu distribution for the Raspberry Pi is required for proper functionality of the gateway. There are two options available to the user:
Download the official Raspberry Pi Imager and flash a microSD card with a Raspian OS (Bullseye) image. The imager can be found on the official Raspberry Pi website.
Flash a microSD card with a VarIoT Linux image that has been preconfigured with support for both LTE-M and LoRaWaN hardware. This image is found on the VarIoT Google Drive.
Note: This image already has the following installed:
rak_common_for_gateway firmware for both RAK2284 LoRa RPi Hat and RAK2013 LTE-M module
A partially configured thingsboard-gateway service, with all required dependencies for a full fledged VarIoT gateway
This effectively mitigates the user from having to setup the gateway following the instructions found under Install Gateway Components. There is no need to setup the gateway from scratch!
If the user elects option 2, please ensure to modify the tb_gateway.yaml file, as mentioned in Configure ThingsBoard Gateway before use.
DO NOT SKIP THIS STEP!