A LoRaWAN Gateway That Keeps Three Networks

PUSR has released the LG270, an eight-channel LoRaWAN edge gateway built on a Semtech SX1302 radio and an industrial RK3506J tri-core Cortex-A7 running at up to 1.2 GHz. It carries a built-in LoRaWAN network server and the WukongEdge edge computing engine, supports more than 1,000 LoRaWAN nodes, and quotes communication range up to 10 kilometres in open areas and 2 kilometres in urban environments. Interfaces are two Ethernet ports, two serial ports, one digital input and one digital output. WukongEdge handles up to 1,000 edge data collection points with local protocol conversion covering Modbus RTU and TCP, BACnet, DLT645, IEC 104, DNP3.0, OPC UA and several PLC protocols. 4G, Wi-Fi 6 and Ethernet provide triple-network redundancy with automatic failover, and a built-in supercapacitor keeps the unit running for about 20 seconds after external power is lost, automatically uploading a power-failure alarm.

The supercapacitor is the detail that reveals whether a gateway was designed by people who have deployed them. Twenty seconds is not enough to do anything useful with the data, and it is exactly enough to do the one thing that matters: finish the current write, close the file cleanly, and send a message saying the power has gone. Without that, a power failure at a remote site is indistinguishable from a network failure, a dead gateway or a crashed application — and the distinction determines whether someone drives out with an electrician or a replacement unit. It also protects the filesystem, which is the most common way an SD-card-based gateway dies permanently.

The built-in network server is the second architectural choice worth noting. A LoRaWAN gateway conventionally forwards packets to a network server elsewhere, which means the whole site depends on a cloud connection for devices to join and for data to be decrypted. Running the network server locally means the site keeps working through an outage, at the cost of managing keys and device registration on the gateway — a sensible trade for an isolated industrial site and the wrong one for a multi-site estate that wants central roaming, which is a decision to make deliberately rather than by default.

The protocol list is the honest indicator of what this device is for. Modbus, BACnet, DLT645, IEC 104 and DNP3 together describe a device intended to sit where a building system, an electricity meter, a substation RTU and a PLC all need to reach the same platform. That is a common and underserved position — the site that has a bit of everything — and the practical caution is the usual one for multi-protocol gateways: the protocol is the easy part, and the work is in the tag mapping, the scaling, and deciding what the gateway does with a value it could not read. Triple-network failover is a genuine asset in that setting, provided somebody has tested that failover actually happens rather than trusting the datasheet.