How to Integrate Kerlink Wanesy with Amazon AWS

Did you know the sensor data received on the Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre doesn’t have to be stored only there? In this blog post, I will show you how you can integrate Kerlink Wanesy with Amazon AWS.

Creating ‘Things’ in AWS

Once logged into the AWS IoT platform, go to the Manage section and click on the Things tab. Then click on Create things and select Create single thing. Press next.

In the ‘Things’ properties section give your ‘Thing’ (no pun intended!) a name.
Then expand the Thing Type tab and click on Create thing type.

You will then need to give a name to your Thing type and expand the Searchable attributes section. Add 3 attributes by clicking the Add attribute button. Name it as per the picture below, then click Create.

Adding searchable Attributes

You should see the green ribbon on top of your screen saying that you successfully created a thing type. Wait for a second and under the thing type section you should see 3 boxes called Searchable attribute and Value – optional next to them. Fill in the values as per the picture below.

Searchable Attributes – Values

Now expand the Non-searchable thing attributes tab. Create 2 more attributes called app_eui and app_key and type the app_eui and app_key of your device. For example:

Non-searchable attributes

Once this is complete, scroll down and click Next. You can select Auto-generate a new certificate tab and click Create thing.

Creating the MQTT Shadow and Manage Certificates

Go to the thing you have created – Manage section > Things tab and click on the Thing name. Go to the Interact tab and click on view settings. Copy the Endpoint and save it in a safe place as you will need it to create a push config at a later stage.

Go back to your thing and click on the Device Shadows tab. Click Create shadow, give it a name and click Create. Now you can go to the shadow you’ve created and copy the MQTT topic prefix. Save it somewhere as it will be needed to configure Push config at a later stage.

Now, go back to your Thing and go to the Certificates tab. Click Create Certificate button.

In the pop-up window click Activate certificate then Download the following:
Device Certificate, Public key file, Private key file and RSA 2048 bit key: Amazon Root CA 1

Once you have that downloaded, click done.

Now from the left-hand side list, select the Secure section and choose the Policies tab.

Create a policy by clicking the button in the top right corner. Give it a name, and then make sure to sign up to all of the Policy actions starting with words iot:
The Policy effect should be set to Allow and the Policy resource should be a * symbol.

Policy details

Once you have all of that, scroll to the bottom of the page and click Save.

Now, go back to the Things tab, your thing, Certificates tab, click on your certificate. On the top of the page, click the Actions button and select Attach Policy from the drop-down menu. A pop up will appear where you need to select your newly created policy and click Attach policies.

Creating a Push-Configuration on Wanesy Management Centre

Now is a good moment to add the device on to Wanesy. If you already have a device added to a different cluster and want to use it to push data to AWS, create a new cluster and move the device into it. Let’s now create a push configuration.

Go to Clusters under the Administration section. At the top of the screen choose the Push configurations tab and then click the + icon in the bottom right corner.

In the pop-up window, give your push config a name, select MQTT type of push and Payload detail level. Then click Next. In the Host box, paste the previously copied Endpoint link.

*If you can’t find it in the AWS go to the following path and copy the Endpoint: Things > Your thing > Interact > View Settings > Endpoint

In the Port box type 8883
The Client ID is the name of the thing on AWS.
You can change Keep alive to 60 seconds.
Tick Enable box under TLS section.
Then click Next

Integrate Kerlink Wanesy with Amazon AWS
Push Config details

On the next page titled Security don’t type anything, just click Next.
On the following page title SSL, you need to add the Certificate, Private Key and Certificate Authorities store. All of that you have previously downloaded from AWS. Just click Choose File and select the Certificate. Repeat the process for the Private Key and Certificate Authorities store (CA). Then click Next.

On the next page called Topics you need to type the Data Up topic.
You can find it on AWS, copy and paste it here.

* To find the Data Up topic on AWS, go to the following path:
Things > Your thing > Device Shadows > Your device shadow > and copy the MQTT topic prefix

Paste it in a Data Up topic box on Wanesy and click Next.

MQTT topic

On the next page titled Messages don’t fill any boxes, just click Validate.

Once you have completed all the steps, go to Clusters under the Administration section and find your cluster. Click on the pencil icon to edit it.

In the pop-up window, enable push and select the push config from the dropdown list. Then click Validate.

Now you can go to the Push configurations tab on the top of the screen and find your push configuration. You can click on the heart icon; this will test that the push config is configured properly. Once you click that, you should get a pop-up message on a green background saying that the push config is correctly configured.

You can now go to your device data up section and see if the data is being pushed. To check this, click End-Devices under Management, then click on the DevEui and Data Up tab. Wait for the next message to arrive and you should see the state Yes in the Pushed column.

Data being pushed outside WMC

Receiving Data on AWS

Once you have the push configuration set up correctly and you can see the data being pushed from Wanesy, to AWS.

To do view this, in AWS, go to the Things tab, Your thing, Activity tab. Then click MQTT test client.

Once you click that, a new tab should open in your browser and you should see the test client. You should already be subscribing to all IoT topics. In case that is not happening, go back to the previous AWS tab and go to the following path:

Things > Your thing > Device Shadows > Your device shadow and copy the MQTT topic prefix

Now go back to the tab where you have the MQTT test client opened and click to Subscribe to a topic. In the empty field below paste the MQTT topic prefix and click Subscribe.

Now wait until the next message arrives from Wanesy to AWS and it will sync and show up the current information and all previous messages.

You can compare messages between Wanesy and AWS to check if they are the same.

Payload message comparison – WMC side
Payload message comparison – AWS side

To summarise this article up to this point you can watch the above video.

Interested in finding out more about integrating Wanesy with Microsoft Azure? Check out our previous blog on How to Integrate Kerlink Wanesy with Microsoft Azure.

To speak with a member of our team about integrating Kerlink Wanesy with your chosen cloud server call us on 01484 599544 or contact us.

How to Integrate Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre with Microsoft Azure

The sensor data received on the Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre doesn’t have to be stored only there. It is possible to integrate various dashboards or other cloud servers such as Microsoft Azure with Wanesy by setting up the HTTP push.

In this blog post, I will guide you through the steps you need to take to integrate Kerlink’s Wanesy Management Centre with Microsoft Azure.

Setting up Microsoft Azure

The first step for integrating your data is to create an account on Microsoft Azure. You can do this for free by visiting the Microsoft Azure website: Create Your Azure Free Account Today | Microsoft Azure.

There are various Pricing Plans to choose from. Some features may be limited in the free variant. The account, however, is free to create and features are paid on a pay-as-you-use basis.

Once the account is created, we will need to use the IoT Central Application and the IoT Hub platform. The IoT Central Application can display data on the dashboard as well as integrate the device templates. The IoT Hub platform is used to adapt the WMC push to Azure.

Setting up the Azure IoT Central Application

In the search bar type ‘IoT Central Applications’ and hit search. You could also click on the icon if shown on the main page.

Then click on the Create button and fill in the boxes as in the picture below.

Creating the IoT Central Application

If the Resource group tab is empty, click Create new and type in a new name.

At this stage the URL is chosen, by default, it is the name of the resource .azureiotcentral.com but you can adjust it accordingly.

Once all the information is inserted, click on the Create button and give it a few minutes to deploy your application.

When you have a “Your deployment is complete” message, you can move forward to the next step.

Connecting Your Devices

Go to your IoT Central Application– the quickest way is to go to the URL chosen in the previous step.
In my example that will be kerlink-demo.azureiotcentral.com

Once you are in your dashboard, go to the Administration section and go to ‘Device Connection’. Find and copy Scope ID. Go to the IoT devices group type and copy the Primary Key. Save it in a text file as it will be required at a later stage.

Finding Scope ID and Keys
Copying Scope ID and keys

Now, go to the following link to create your custom template. https://portal.azure.com/#create/Microsoft.Template/uri/https%3A%2F%2Fraw.githubusercontent.com%2FBenoitDuffez%2Fiotc-device-bridge%2Fmaster%2Fazuredeploy.json<

Choose ‘Kerlink Resource Group’ and paste the Scope ID here as well as the Primary Key. Paste the Primary Key in the “IoT Central SAS Key” box.

Creating a custom deployment

Click Next: Review + create. Review the options and click Create.

Wait a minute until the Deployment is done and when you have the message saying “Your deployment is complete” you can move on to the next steps.

Adding Your Devices to Kerlink WMC

Now is a great time for you to add your devices to the Wanesy Management Center. You can skip this step if you have devices already added. Just remember to create a new push configuration later and assign it to the existing cluster.

First of all, login to WMC, go to the Administration section, then select Clusters. In the bottom right corner click the plus icon and create a new cluster. A pop up window till open, in here you will need to give it a name and disable Push configuration. (later on, once we have the push configuration made, we will need to enable this).

Click Validate. Once you have done this, go to the Administration section and ‘End Devices’ tab. Click on the plus icon in the bottom right and fill in all the information. Follow instructions until you can click Validate. When you click Validate the device will be added to the WMC.

Setting up the Push URL

Go back to Microsoft Azure and go toIoT Central applications, click on the Kerlink resource group and click on the function app which has a thunder icon.

Once that is open, go to the Functions section on the left-hand side menu and click on Functions. Click on the function that triggers the HTTP event and select the Code + Test tab. Give it a minute to load and from the tabs on the top of the screen select Get function URL.

Getting the function URL

In the pop-up window leave the key as default and copy the URL.

Copying the URL

Now go to Kerlink Wanesy and click on the Administration section and Clusters tab. On top of the screen select Push Configurations and then click the plus icon in the bottom right.

In the pop-up window, type the name, select HTTP type and Payload message detail level. Click next.

On the next screen paste the URL from Azure. You need to cut the URL from its end up to the question mark symbol (including the ?). You will then need to pastethis into the Data Up route box.

For example:

This is my example link from Azure:
https://iotc-fnp7rbonitg2tyg.azurewebsites.net/api/IoTCIntegration?code=gykWSte3vai5YEaECLlm5PGuMm0fb7RWE9I10m6TLFqTWxVhmfVJCQ==

In the URL box should be this part:
https://iotc-fnp7rbonitg2tyg.azurewebsites.net/api/IoTCIntegration

And in the Data Up route the rest, that is:
?code=gykWSte3vai5YEaECLlm5PGuMm0fb7RWE9I10m6TLFqTWxVhmfVJCQ==

WMC Push Config URL

Then click Next, don’t choose any SSLs, click Next again, and click Validate without creating any custom headers.

Now go to the Clusters tab on the top of the screen. Find the cluster you have created previously (or find the cluster that you have the sensors in) and click on the pencil icon next to it to edit.

In the pop-up window under the ‘Push’ section, click Enable and from the drop-down list select the Push configuration that you’ve just created. Press Validate.

Once that is done, uplink messages will start being pushed to Azure from the next time the sensor sends the uplink.

Creating the Device and Device Template on Azure

In MS Azure go to your IoT Central Application. The easiest way to get there is to go via the URL created at the beginning – the name of the resource .azureiotcentral.com
In my case it is kerlink-demo.azureiotcentral.com.

You can start with creating a device. Click on Devices and then New. Type the name and Device ID. You can use any name and any ID, for demo purposes I’ve selected the name of the sensor as the name and its DevEui as the ID. You can leave the Template as unassigned at this stage. Then click Create.

Once you create a device, it will have a “registered” status. After it starts sending data, the status will change from “registered” to “provisioned”.

You can then go into the device screen and in the Raw data screen, you should see uplink messages. Go to the Manage template tab at the top of the screen and select the Auto-create template option. Then click on Create template button.

Once you go back to the devices tab and click the row with a message, you will see more detailed pieces of information for each message.

It is worth mentioning here, the number of messages you can see on Azure depends on the plan you’ve selected earlier. Free plans limit the number of messages quite drastically. If you exceed the number of messages they will just stop appearing in the Azure.

If you have a device sending the uplink every few minutes, you will most likely exceed the limit in no time.

“How To” video

To summarise this article up to this point you can watch the above video.

Further Steps

Further steps to use the decoder and fully decode the data will be researched soon. The way to do it is by creating the IoT Hub in Azure and registering the device there along with linking the decoder to it. The further steps of how to do it are currently under development.

To speak with a member of our team about integrating Kerlink Wanesy with your chosen cloud server call us on 01484 599544 or contact us.

LoRaWAN Network Management – Why use Kerlink Wanesy?

LoRaWAN Network Management is no simple task. With the potential of having hundreds, even thousands of devices connected to your network, there are various implications which are worth considering. We’ve compiled a short blog to help you identify the benefits that Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre could offer you.

Kerlink Wanesy Management Centre

LoRaWAN® networks are free to use, but there are numerous other costs you should take into account. If you are using free-to-use software there will still be costs involved; you will need to learn how it works, maintain it and support it. If you are setting up a private LoRaWAN® network, no matter how small, you are effectively becoming a radio network operator for your customers. The infrastructure of your networks include:

  • The physical gateways
  • The back haul from the gateways to the internet
  • The LoRaWAN® network server

If any part of this infrastructure has a problem, your entire system will stop working which could unravel even more problems for you!

It’s important you have the right support behind you when problems occur. With Kerlink Wanesy (or any other commercial LNS), you are outsourcing this support burden to Alliot and Kerlink.

Network management is often overlooked by end users, this is a key factor to the failure of IoT solutions at the proof of concept stage.

What is Kerlink Wanesy?

Kerlink’s Wanesy Management Centre can be thought as being two things; 1. a LoRaWAN Network Server and 2. Remote Gateway Management.

Kerlink’s Wanesy LoRaWAN network server implements the LoRaWAN protocol and acts as an essential piece of middleware. This is comparable to other products such as Chirpstack, The Things Network and to some extent, LORIOT.

Remote Gateway Management

The Gateway Management element is something that is currently unique to Kerlink. It provides a central, web-based client where you can remotely access your deployed gateways wherever they may. Regardless of how your devices are connected to the internet, you can access them with Kerlink Wanesy. This means you can even access gateways using 3G or 4G SIM cards. With these devices, the gateway establishes a VPN between itself and Wanesy. With this unique feature, you can perform firmware upgrades and diagnose problems remotely without having to make site visits.

Alerting System

Kerlink’s intuitive Wanesy LoRaWAN Network Management also features an alerting system. This enables you to identify potential problems early and monitor the performance of sensors and gateways on your network.

Security

Security of IoT systems is a hot topic. Kerlink Wanesy allows you to deploy a secure platform in the following ways:

  • Hardened OpenVPN configuration and certificate authentication help to ensure secure communication between gateways and the server.
  • Both the server and gateway software are centrally managed and are thoroughly tested by Kerlink’s developers making it simple for you to keep software up to date.
  • Alerting lets you know about potential problems before they cause too much disruption.

Kerlink’s Wanesy Management Centre also offers a competitive commercial offering. Unlike other LNS options, Kerlink Wanesy offers you low on-boarding fees, and is cost based on the number of gateways, not sensors.

Contact our expert team today to discuss the best LoRaWAN Network Services for your solutions.

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Alliot Become Kerlink Gold Partner

Alliot become Kerlink Gold Partner

We’re delighted to have been awarded the Gold Partner Status by Kerlink. Find out more about our recent accreditation in this short blog.

Who are Kerlink?

Based in France, Kerlink is a fast-growing, global brand. Their main focus is around gateways and their industry-leading Wanesy network server. Kerlink’s offering supports the design, launch and operation of many IoT solutions. As founding and board members of the LoRa Alliance, they are leaders in their field.

Operating a tiered partner system, Kerlink base their partner statuses on company performance.

Growth for Alliot & Kerlink

Alliot first became a Kerlink partner in October 2019. Since then our sales and business has gone from strength to strength, helping us to achieve the Kerlink gold partner status!

Despite the challenges we’ve all faced over the past 12 months, we’ve been lucky to have worked with many of our partners to deliver some really innovative projects. Kerlink’s products play a pivotal role in our offering, helping to bring solutions to life. With LoRaWAN gateways for indoor and outdoor use, the Wanesy management centre and the Wanesy Wave tracking solution, Kerlink are an important asset to any IoT set up.

We look forward to further developing our relationship throughout 2021 and growing Kerlink business throughout the UK and Europe.

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Creating an Intelligent Building Management System with IoT

Our wide range of sensors can be applied to an endless variety of applications. In fact, sometimes it can be a little overwhelming deciphering what sensors to apply to your project. To help, we’ve created a case study to demonstrate how you may apply some of our LoRaWAN devices to create an intelligent business management system.

We often find that our customers know what issues they want to solves, but don’t always know how to address these. Our expert team are on hand to assist your with the planning, design and implementation of your IoT projects.

One of the beauties of LoRaWAN is that it can be implemented with minimal cost and disruption. LoRaWAN operates on its own network meaning you don’t have to disrupt any of your existing infrastructure. It also offers a scalable solution to enable you to expand your measurement points as/when your project expands.

Smart Buildings with Alliot

When creating this case study, we began by thinking about three key factors you may wish to address when creating an intelligent building management system, for this purpose we selected:

  • Workplace safety
  • Creating optimal working conditions for staff members
  • Optimising overall efficiencies

These three objectives are often at the forefront of many building/facilities managers agendas. Many want to improve the overall environment of their buildings for staff well being, as well as making savings by improving operational efficiencies. Whatever your objectives, we know that in order to be commercially deployable, your solutions need to offer a positive return on your investment.

The next step we made was to apply the objectives to our chosen application of intelligent BMS’. We put ourselves into the shoes of an office worker (we can just about recall being in the office!) and looked at the journey in and around the building. This lead us to select the following products.

  1. Elsys Desk Sensor: Monitors desk occupancy, temperature and humidity to create optimal working conditions.
  2. Netvox R72615A CO2 Sensor: Improve staff productivity by monitoring CO2 levels.
  3. Kerlink Ifemtocell Evolution Gateway: Transfer data from your sensors to your selected platform.
  4. Kerlink Wanesy Platform: Visualise your recorded data.
  5. Tekelek Waste Bin Sensor: Optimise waste collections.
  6. Kentix SmartXcan: Monitor the body temperatures of employees and visitors to create a COVID-secure workplace.
  7. Netvox R718CK2 Thermocouple Sensor: Remotely monitor your Legionella risk and automatically maintain records.
  8. Robeau Smart Water Meter: Make savings based on water usage and remotely detect leaks.

Find out more about how we applied the above devices in our BMS case study.

For assistance with designing your intelligent building management system solution of for information about creating a bespoke proof of concept kit contact our expert team today.