The Things Stack v3

A new LoRaWAN stack, and a plugin to bring it to Thinger.io

On May 28th, 2021, The Things Network publicly announced the launch of its new stack for the deployment of LoRaWAN devices.

Among its new features: a new architecture with new components, new support for uplink and downlink payload formatters, and an uplink system with message priorities that will be very useful to manage parameters in the deployed devices.

All of this adds to the value proposition of The Things Network, which today runs the largest LoRaWAN network in the world through a large user community in which anyone can participate, simply by registering on its website or contributing to the gateway network. Thanks to this orientation it now has almost global coverage.

Almost 11,000
gateways in The Things Network
June 2021
More than 100,000
developers supported by its community
June 2021

The plugin

Built as soon as the new stack was announced

The Thinger.io team took notice of the first news about the new technology and started developing a plugin to adapt the new stack to the platform as soon as possible.

Requests from the Thinger.io user community were very useful along the way, and so was their help in debugging the solution.

The goal of the plugin is to simplify the integration of applications and improve the experience of developers integrating their TTN devices, bringing enhanced functionalities and a simple way to work with all the other Thinger.io features:

Device auto-provisioning

Devices are created on the platform automatically, which simplifies large deployments.

Uplink and downlink processing and storage

Data processed in both directions and stored on the platform.

Dashboards

Dashboarding to display the data of the devices.

Geofencing

Track the location of the devices and create automatic alerts.

Node-RED and Grafana

Process the data further with a third plugin, such as Node-RED's or Grafana's, which also have their integration on the Thinger.io platform.
Diagram: LoRaWAN devices talk to gateways, the gateways to The Things Stack, and the integration plugin carries data both ways between The Things Stack and the Thinger.io platform, which feeds data buckets, dashboards and endpoints
From the device to the platform: devices, gateways, The Things Stack, the integration plugin, and then data buckets, dashboards and endpoints in Thinger.io.

As Thinger.io is hardware agnostic, once the devices have been integrated into the platform they can share infrastructure with devices connected via MQTT or Sigfox in a completely transparent way. That makes it possible to create projects with hybrid networks, using the most suitable device for each situation.

The Things Stack is today one of three LoRaWAN network servers the platform connects through a plugin, with LORIOT and ChirpStack, alongside MQTT, HTTP and Sigfox. See device connectivity.

Simple integration

A few clicks on each side

The integration between the two platforms only requires a few clicks.

Configure the plugin with the application ID

The plugin works with the TTN application, not with each device on its own.

Customize the payload data processing

Decide how the plugin's payload processing tool treats the data of the application.

Create the webhook in The Things Stack

Thinger.io provides all the data needed to configure a custom webhook in The Things Stack, which is nothing more than a REST API endpoint, an access token and the selection of the JSON message format.
The plugin settings in the Thinger.io console, Webhook Settings tab: endpoint base URL, authorization header with a bearer token, and the uplink message path /uplink
The Webhook Settings tab of the plugin: the endpoint, the authorization header and the uplink path to copy into The Things Stack.

If you are interested in this integration, the documentation has an extensive explanation of every step.

At the time of writing, June 2021, the team also announced a specific webhook in the integration list of The Things Stack, to simplify the process even more.

TTN conference 2021

The integration, live, at The Things Network 2021 conference

The TTN team invited Thinger.io to take part in their conference, an opportunity to explain the integration firsthand to the community.

The talk walks through the integration with a real use case: connecting an air quality measurement device.

Unleashing The Things Stack potential with Thinger.io, by Jorge Trincado Castán (Thinger.io), at The Things Network 2021 conference.

Try it

Test the plugin with an expert

Thank you for your attention. To test this new plugin, contact the team to schedule a demonstration with one of our experts.

When this post was published, the team offered a one-month free trial of the premium Thinger.io platform to test the plugin.

Schedule a demonstration

See The Things Stack plugin working with one of our experts, from the application ID to the webhook.

Request a demoRead the integration guide