Geolocation

Location, on the map and in the rules

It is increasingly common for connected projects to use geolocation, either to monitor the location of mobile assets such as vehicle fleets or livestock, or just to help identify devices on a map in their graphical interface.

Maps offer an easy way to identify the devices of a network by their position. Many software technologies improve the geolocation capabilities of a project, both to visualize the data and to program automations that keep resources under surveillance automatically and in real time, by means of geofences.

After analyzing the needs of our users around geolocation, we have reviewed the capabilities of the platform and added some of them. They work with any kind of device, such as Sigfox, LoRaWAN (also with The Things Network devices) or even HTTP integrations.

In this release

Release
Thinger.io 2.9.4
Available for
Community usersProfessional instances
Works with
SigfoxLoRaWANThe Things NetworkHTTP integration
Documentation
Geofences

Geofencing

Geofencing support for IoT projects

Geofencing defines a virtual perimeter over a geographical area and watches the position of devices relative to it.

An area can be a radius around a point or a traced polygon. Monitoring the relative position of the devices and those areas triggers entering or leaving events, and lets you define custom behaviors.

In Thinger.io, the geofencing service is associated with devices (or groups of devices), so the configuration is simple. The example below uses an HTTP device called through its callback:

Create a device

Any device works; the example uses an HTTP device that is called through its callback.

Draw the areas

Open the “Geofences” tab of the device dashboard and activate the edit panel to draw one or more areas to be evaluated.

Choose a behavior per area

On entering, on leaving, or while the device remains inside or outside, select an endpoint as the result.

Send a position

Call the device callback with a latitude and a longitude; the server uses them to make the comparison.
The Geofences tab of a device in the Thinger.io console: a satellite map with a circular area over central Europe and a rectangular area over North Africa, and drawing tools at the top
Two areas drawn on the Geofences tab of a device: a radius around a point and a rectangle.

Endpoints are a very versatile tool of the platform: they can send emails or HTTP requests to any other service, or even execute actions on the platform itself.

The Geofences Actions table: Geofence 1 calls the endpoint alert on enter, Geofence 2 calls TelegramAPI on exit, with columns for while inside, while outside, color and enabled
One endpoint per event: an alert when a device enters Geofence 1, a Telegram message when it leaves Geofence 2.

To try it, call the callback of the device with a latitude and a longitude, as in the sample body included in the callback overview:

Sample body
{
  "lat": 40.416775,
  "lng": -3.70379,
  "temperature": 23.33,
  "humidity": 32.44
}

POST to the device callback

Callback Details of the device, Overview tab: the method URL, a temporary authorization header and the sample body with lat, lng, temperature and humidity
The callback overview gives the URL, a temporary authorization header and the sample body.

The same functionality applies to sets of devices with the Asset Manager. A more detailed description is in the Geofences documentation, and you can look for help in the community discussion forum.

Update, 2026: asset groups, nested as deep as you need, carry their own properties and geofences, and the assets map shows the whole fleet at a glance. See Fleet management.

Dashboards

An improved Google Maps widget

The basic integration only showed the location in real time or fixed positions. Now it does much more.

Track route

Display the route the device has followed.

Custom waypoints

Mark custom waypoints along the way.

Map settings

Default zoom level, map type and path color.
Google Maps widget showing a green track route with direction markers north-west of Valencia, and a red position marker
The route of a device near Valencia, drawn in the path color chosen in the widget.

All these options are easy to configure in the widget creation form: an interesting addition to any display dashboard. As always, we have tried to keep the interface easy and fast when applying changes on the platform. More on widgets on the Dashboards page.

Release 2.9.4

Available for community and professional instances

All these features are included in Thinger.io revision 2.9.4, available for both community users and professional instances.

They are not the only ones: the release comes loaded with features oriented to project scalability, with tools to group resources and better manage projects. Those are covered in the post dedicated to the platform’s professional features, Thinger.io Professional Tools.

Questions about geofences?

As always, feel free to share your questions and projects with the community.

Ask in the community forumSee asset groups and geofences