I read in another post that if you disconnect the cable from the MPPT the ve direct module should flash yellow if it is connecting to the gateway. Mine is not. The Things Gateway I setup is connected. Could the ve module potentially be defective? Any suggestions would be appreciated!

The module will blink blue while it is connecting to the network. It will only blink yellow of green once it has connected. So it's correct you're not seeing it blink yellow when it is still connecting, it will continue blinking blue.

A few things you can check:

• Is your The Things Gateway connected to the appropriate cluster for your region? EU868 modules should use the eu1 cluster, US915 modules should use the nam1 cluster, and AU915 modules should use the au1 cluster.
• Since you are running your own gateway, you can look at the traffic from the gateway to check if it is receiving the messages broadcasted from your module. To do so, log in to the appropriate cluster in the TTN Console, go to your gateway, and in the Live Data view look for messages from your device (the DevEUI / Entity ID will match the VRM Portal ID). If you're not seeing data from your module there, your gateway may not be set up correctly.