I have successfully setup our new Blues LoRa Gateway, and I’m curious if/how it will appear in the TTN mapper. We will soon deploy the gateway to a remote building, and I’d hoped to be able to quickly check its network status using the TTN mapper, like so…
Do your pre-configured Blues gateways generally show up in the TTN Mapper?
If so, since the gateway does not know its location automatically, I’m assuming its coordinates have to be manually entered somewhere in the TTN console for it to show up correctly on the map? Is that something Blues can edit for me since I don’t have access to those configs? (Or do I?)
We are looking into this but are waiting on some information from TTN to validate whether or not this is possible (due to the somewhat unique setup we are using for Notehub integration). Will let you know ASAP.
While it is possible for us to add all Blues gateways to TTN Mapper, unfortunately that’s the problem - it’s all or nothing, as this is a global setting in our Things Stack tenant. Since this isn’t something we include in our TOS, it’s not a feature we can enable at this time.
@RobLauer Thanks for the update Rob. What you’re saying makes sense. However does that mean there is no way for us to monitor the status of gateways remotely, or more specifically monitor TTN’s assessment of their connection status on the network? Is there an alternative practice for this other than the TTN mapper, something Blues can provide through Notehub perhaps?
If the answer is no, that would seem to be a major gap in functionality for a deployment of multiple gateways that have to be managed remotely. The project we’re looking at involves exactly that, multiple gateways deployed an hour away from the city, in buildings that are unoccupied most of the time and fairly far apart. When we inevitably end up in a troubleshooting situation, it will be invaluable to be able to quickly hit a web page and see each gateway’s status at a glance.
We can install VPNs on some of the locations’ routers (but not all) so we can hit some of the gateways’ web interfaces, but I feel like that will only give us part of the picture. It might tell us the gateway’s opinion of network status, but unless I’m wrong it’s not going to tell us what TTN thinks its status is and the last time it was seen online. Do you know of any other way to get to that TTN gateway data other than the TTN mapper?
Also, would this also apply to a third-party gateway that is user-configured to work with Blues? Would it also be hidden from the TTN mapper due to the same TTN configuration? Or is there something unique to the Blues pre-configured gateway that makes this the case? I’m guessing it’s the case for any gateway configured for the Blues tenant, but thought I’d ask just in case.
We’ve been looking into this more and what we can do is enable the visibility of other gateway-specific information (just not location). For example would “status” be adequate for your needs?
@RobLauer Hey Rob, thanks for following up. Yeah I think ‘Status’ would definitely be better than nothing, and should answer the main question of whether or not TTN is seeing a gateway as online.
I’d be interested in ‘Packet Rates’ too, as I assume that could be used as some sort of comparator of throughput/traffic.
But I’m curious how the gateways will appear on the TTN Mapper without a location since the system won’t know where to draw it on the map. Or are you thinking it will it appear on the map, but without the location data visible? That would be ideal I suppose, as most people likely don’t want the GPS coordinates published. That brings back up the question in my original post though, how to get the location data into the TTN database so it knows where to place it on the map.
These settings have been turned on now. I was able to find my gateway and I see the online bool but I’m not sure how/if the packet rates are included yet:
