Digi is a trusted name in the wireless world, known for making LoRaWAN connectivity rugged, reliable, and easy to deploy. Their latest product, the Digi HX20, is a modular, IP67-rated outdoor LoRaWAN gateway built for demanding environments—from remote monitoring setups to smart city deployments. Voltaic recently received an early unit of Digi’s new HX20: a rugged, modular gateway for outdoor LoRaWAN, and we put it through its paces in the lab and with our CORE Solar System.
Rugged & Ready Mounting
The HX20 ships pre-assembled in a robust, waterproof enclosure complete with pole-mount hardware. Mounting it is as straightforward as threading a steel strap or hose clamp through the integrated bracket—no extra mounting equipment required. The enclosure includes a waterproof RJ45 PG gland, which paired well with our standard outdoor, bootless Ethernet patch cables.
PoE+ Power
Voltaic’s CORE batteries output 12V, but we are able to integrate a PoE injector to output PoE+ or IEEE 802.3at directly. For this test, we measured the power consumption using a TSW101 from Teltonika. To date, Voltaic hasn’t found a more efficient 4-port PoE Switch that can boost up from 12 V for this type of low-voltage integration.
Power Consumption
Idling without any outputs plugged in, the TSW101 uses 0.9 W (12.80 V, 0.07 A).
We’ve found that PoE devices typically “jump around” in current draw when measured on a benchtop power supply, whereas plain DC devices are fairly stable. In this case, the current draw (from both the TSW101 and HX20) varied from 0.32 A to 0.42 A at 12.8 V.
- Average current draw: ~0.36 A
- Average power consumption: ~4.6 W
In New York City, we’d use a 100 Watt CORE Solar System to power this load.
Fast and Frictionless Setup
It’s worth noting how easy the HX20 setup and install process was. We received a card that logged us into haxiot.com with a new account.
From there we:
- Attached the included antenna
- Connected the HX20 to PoE
- Scanned the QR code on the gateway to register it to our XON account
Smooth sailing from there. Everything just worked. No surprises, just connectivity.
The HX20 Gateway captures data from LoRaWAN-enabled sensors and devices in the field and forwards that data securely to the Digi X-ON Platform over the internet (via Ethernet or optional LTE).
The Digi X-ON™ IoT Platform is a comprehensive device-to-cloud solution designed to facilitate secure, long-range, and low-power wireless connectivity for IoT devices utilizing LoRaWAN. The X-ON acts as the network server, JOIN server, and application interface, managing the communication flow between devices and applications.
Together, the HX20 and X-ON deliver a plug-and-play LoRaWAN infrastructure—rugged in the field, intuitive in the cloud.
The Digi HX20 is rugged, easy to mount, and quick to deploy. When paired with Voltaic’s CORE solar battery systems, it becomes a powerful option for remote wireless applications. Learn more about how we use solar to power gateways.
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