Using Thingsboard to Visualize SigFox Data

Sigfox is low-cost, low energy consumption connectivity solution that allows to collect relatively small amount of data from your IoT devices. Sigfox Backend allows to provision custom callbacks and push data to your server applications. We will use this feature to push data to Thingsboard IoT Gateway. The Gateway will take care of routing tasks: convert data to unified format, device provisioning, data delivery, etc. Once data is delivered to Thingsboard we will be able to see it on advanced real-time IoT dashboards and share this IoT dashboards with end-users.

Thingsboard is an open-source server-side platform that allows you to monitor and control IoT devices. It is free for both personal and commercial usage and you can deploy it anywhere. If this is your first experience with the platform I recommend to review what-is-thingsboard page and getting-started guide.

Step 1: Prerequisites

Thingsboard. We assume you already have access to Thingsboard instance. You can use either our live demo server or install your own Thingsboard instance using one of the installation options.
Thingsboard IoT Gateway. We also assume you already installed Thingsboard IoT Gateway using one of the installation options and provisioned it within your Thingsboard instance.
Sigfox. We also expect you have your Sigfox devices registered in Sigfox Backend.

NOTE: Both Thingsboard and Thingsboard IoT Gateway need to be installed in the cloud to be accessible by Sigfox Gateway.

Step 2: Configure UPLINK Callback From Sigfox Backend

Let’s assume we want to publish coordinates, temperature and humidity data from your Sigfox module to Thingsboard. In order to achieve this, you will need to select device type and configure custom callback from Sigfox Backend to our IoT Gateway.

Few things to notice:

This is UPLINK data callback;
URL pattern contains IoT Gateway host, port and device type id;
Authorization header is used to authenticate Sigfox server;
POST HTTP method is required;
Message body is a valid JSON document;
Message body uses regular variables: device, lat, lng;
Message body uses custom variables which are case sensitive: Temperature and Humidity.

Once again, we assume you have deployed the gateway on some cloud server to get the static IP address or hostname.

Step 3: Enable Sigfox Extension in Thingsboard IoT Gateway

Navigate to gateway configuration folder and edit tb-gateway.yml file. Configuration folder location:

Windows: YOUR_INSTALL_DIR/conf

Linux: /etc/tb-gateway/conf

Change sigfox.enabled property value to true.

Step 4: Configure Sigfox Extension

The sigfox-config.json contains configuration that allows mapping of JSON messages from Sigfox Backend to Thingsboard telemetry. The default mapping listed below will allow to convert data from Sigfox Backend and publish it to Thingsboard.

{
  "deviceTypeConfigurations": [
    {
      "deviceTypeId": "YOUR_DEVICE_TYPE_ID",
      "token": "SECURITY_TOKEN",
      "converter": {
        "deviceNameJsonExpression": "${$.device}",
        "attributes": [
          {
            "type": "string",
            "key": "lat",
            "value": "${$.lat}"
          },
          {
            "type": "string",
            "key": "lng",
            "value": "${$.lng}"
          }
        ],
        "timeseries": [
          {
            "type": "double",
            "key": "temperature",
            "value": "${$.data.temperature}",
            "transformer": {
              "type": "intToDouble"
            }
          },
          {
            "type": "double",
            "key": "humidity",
            "value": "${$.data.humidity}",
            "transformer": {
              "type": "intToDouble"
            }
          }
        ]
      }
    }
  ]
}

Few things to notice:

YOUR_DEVICE_TYPE_ID need to be replaced with the actual value (“58cb911a5005742b3b4c41a0” in our case)
SECURITY_TOKEN need to be replaced with the random value (“Basic U0lHRk9YX1RFU1RfVE9LRU4=” in our case)
JsonPath expression are used to extract values from incoming JSON (“$.data.temperature” in our case).
All JsonPath expressions need to be placed into ${}.
Transformers are used to convert data types. For example, integer to double using “(65536-X)/10” formula. You can plugin your own converters.

See Sigfox extension configuration for more details.

Step 5: Restart Thingsboard Gateway

Restart your gateway using following commands

Windows: 
net stop tb-gateway
net start tb-gateway
Linux: 
sudo service tb-gateway restart

Step 6: Observe Sigfox Devices in Thingsboard

Once your Sigfox Backend callback is configured, you may observe incoming messages in Thingsboard IoT Gateway logs. If everything is configured correctly, you will see new devices in your Tenant Administrator device list.

You are able to open particular device and check that telemetry values arrived successfully.

Step 7: Provision Sigfox Dashboard

Download the dashboard file using this link. Use import/export instructions to import the dashboard to your Thingsboard instance.

NOTE: During import you will need to select device that you want to visualize.

Once imported, click on the dashboard card to see your device data.

Introduction: Using Thingsboard to Visualize SigFox Data