Kona Photon Setup Guide

This document will guide you through the proper setup and configuration of your Kona Photon gateway, ensuring a smooth initial deployment while helping you steer clear of common challenges.

Powering the Kona Photon Gateway:

The Kona Photon gateway can be powered using two different methods: Power over Ethernet (PoE) and a Solar Panel. However, each method has distinct characteristics and important considerations that customers should be aware of.

• Powering the gateway via Solar Panel:
  • This is the way the gateway is intended to be powered during normal operation of the gateway. If the Solar panel is connected to the gateway, PoE must be disconnected.

• • The Solar Panel should be placed outdoors in an open area with good Solar Visibility. Weather conditions such as an overcast, snow, or rain clouds obstructing the view of the sun will prevent the gateway battery from being charged by the Solar Panel.
  • Once placed in a good location with good solar visibility, the Solar Panel will begin to charge the gateway battery. In the event that the gateway's battery was fully depleted, it may take some time for the solar panel to charge the gateway battery enough to turn the gateway on. 
• Powering the gateway via Power over Ethernet (PoE)
  • Powering the gateway in this way is only recommended for initial configuration of the gateway, or debugging the gateway in lab environments. If the gateway is powered via PoE, the Solar panel must be disconnected.
  • Powering the gateway via PoE does not charge the gateway battery in any capacity. The gateway battery can only be charged through the Solar Panel.

  • If the battery is sufficiently depleted, and if PoE is connected without a LAN connection, then on startup, a low battery startup condition will be detected, which will prevent the gateway from booting normally. If however, LAN is connected to the PoE injector (i.e the gateway detects a network connection on eth0), then the unit will boot normally.  

• Troubleshooting Common Gateway Powering Issues
  
  • Gateway Solar Panel is connected, however the gateway will not turn on:
    • Ensure that the Solar Panel is in an open outdoor space, and that the panel's view of the sun is not obstructed by anything.
    • Allow some time for the gateway battery to charge. If the gateway battery has been sufficiently drained prior to the initial deployment, it will take some time for the solar panel to give the gateway enough of a charge to power the gateway.
      
  • Kona Photon Gateway is constantly rebooting:
    • Ensure that the gateway has a working ethernet or cellular backhaul. The Kona Photon network monitor attempts to determine if a network connection exists by pinging out on the ethernet and cellular interfaces.  If pings on both interfaces are not successful, the gateway will reboot after approximately 10 minutes.
    • If powered by the Solar Panel, ensure that the Solar Panel has been left in an area with good solar coverage for at least 30 minutes. If the charge on the gateway battery is too low, the gateway will pause startup of the gateway and retry approx. 5 minutes later.
  • If you still continue to see issues after ensuring the conditions above have been met, please reach out to Tektelic Support, or to your Tektelic Sales representative. 

Connecting to the Kona Photon Gateway:

To configure your Kona Photon gateway for your various use cases, you will first need to connect to the gateway. To do so, we have two recommended methods as seen below:

1. As mentioned in the above powering section, you can use Power over Ethernet (PoE) to initially power the gateway, however the solar panel needs to be disconnected, and your PoE Injector needs to have a LAN cable connected. 
   1. With the LAN cable connected, your Photon gateways will be leased an IP address from your network's DHCP server. You can use this IP address to access the gateway's SSH command line to make the configuration changes you require.
   2. You can also connect to the gateway using the serial port located behind the plastic shield on the front panel. To do this, use a serial cable along with a terminal emulator program, such as PuTTY or TeraTerm. Be sure to configure the terminal settings as specified below:

1. 1. 1. Port: COM(#) associated with the Serial Cable connected to your computer
      2. Speed/Baud Rate: 115200
      3. Data: 8 bit
      4. Parity: None
      5. Stop bits: 1 bit
      6. Flow Control: None
2. If PoE is not an option, you can set the gateway up to be powered via its Solar Panel, and then connect to the gateway via the Serial Port pictured above. If powering via the gateway's solar panel, please ensure that PoE is not connected. 

Configuring the Kona Photon Gateway:

Prior to deploying your Kona Photon gateway, you will want to ensure that everything is configured properly and working in a lab / test environment. Below are some things to check to make sure your deployment goes as smoothly as possible:

1. In your lab environment, ensure that the gateway shows as online in your LoRaWAN Network Server, and that sensors are communicating to the LoRaWAN Network Server using the gateway. 
2. While connected to the Photon gateway command line, you will want to ensure that the gateway's cellular interface is working as this is how the gateway will connect to the internet in most solar powered deployments.
   1. First run the command "sudo ifconfig" from the gateway command line. If your cellular backhaul is working, you should see an IP address for the wwan0 interface as seen in the screenshot below:

1. 1. Run the command tail -f /var/log/debug. From this log file you should be able to see successful pings being sent from the wwan0 interface if you have set up your gateways cellular connection correctly as seen below:

If you have any trouble getting the cellular backhaul working on your gateway, please see the Cellular Troubleshooting Guide below:

https://knowledgehub.tektelic.com/troubleshooting-kona-gateway-cellular-backhaul