Sigfox  is nowadays one of the most commonly used IoT infrastructures when talking about remote or battery-powered projects. It was the first large communications network created exclusively for IoT purposes, providing many advantages such as wide network coverage and very low-power consumption that makes it perfect for remote applications that do not need much bandwidth, as the maximum message payload size is 12 bytes. In addition, Sigfox has a large community of developers and device manufacturers that supports the creating of any connected solution in a very simple way.

Since the beginning of Thinger.io, many developers have used our platform to store and show data retrieved from Sigfox devices, this way both platforms complement each other really well. Traditionally this integration was made sending HTTP requests to a Data Bucket, allowing Sigfox Cloud forwarding device messages to Thinger.io just to be stored. This process needs to be made for each device individually so it wasn’t really scalable for big projects and also did not allow using some features such as real-time monitoring or sending Downlink messages to devices.

That’s why we decided to make a huge improvement in the relation between both platforms, allowing an easier deployment and getting the best performance out of both technologies, with a new plugin that is now available on Thinger.io Plugins Marketplace

Sigfox Integration Plugin

The main objective of this plugin is to support the deployment of large devices networks quickly, and allow using every useful feature of both platforms as resumed in the next sections:

Improved device management

• Devices auto-provisioning to simplify large networks deployment
• Connection timeout alerts
• Devices geolocation support and representation in Google Maps widget

Uplink with payload-data processing

• Custom payload processing to convert float variables, units transformation or just process data with custom algorithms
• Automatic storage in data buckets
• Allowing third-party integrations with custom endpoint manager.

Downlink processes

• Allows simple configuration of device program parameters with JSON format
• Custom  downlink payload processing to translate JSON to 8 bytes message
• Automatic message dispatch

New Opportunities and IoT use cases

Although integration with Sigfox was already possible traditionally and left us with such amazing use cases as the IoT Birdfeeder, or the meteorologic station of Programarfacil.com, We believe that the new capabilities of this integration will help the development of large projects in production areas, allowing projects such as freezer monitoring, animal geolocation, asset management or fleet geofencing. If you want to undertake any project related to these use cases do not hesitate to take a look at our Platform Documentation, where all this integration has been explained in detail or write our support team to find together the best way to carry it out.

In future blog entries, we will reveal in more detail other Thinger.io Platform improvements implemented with the plugin system that will open up all kinds of new use cases, especially when using it in combination with other technologies.