A few months ago I and a few colleagues/collaborators started to get heads up that this might happen but despite asking a few questions that we hoped might give clarity to timelines, options etc. before posting here it looks like its has/is now happening. For anyone who doesn’t check the myDevices/Cayenne Community pages regulartly here is text of the formal announcement.
Recommendations 1) back-up any data (if not already in hand!) that you may have stored on the site 2) find a new home! 3) Note EOL date (and comment in thread that it may not be a hard limit!).
Any quick and simple alternate recommendations (with TTN Integration) welcome here - ideally ones where it’s a simple port with direct Cayenne LPP format data migration out of the box to ease any user transitions (avoid need to update devices already deployed using CLPP)
Quote:
End-of-Life Announcement
We hope this message finds you well. After careful evaluation, we have made the difficult but necessary decision to announce the end-of-life for Cayenne services.
Reasons for Termination:
Lack of Maintenance: The Cayenne service has been unmaintained for an extended period, making it increasingly challenging to provide the level of service you expect and deserve.
Shift in Focus: As we aim to offer more robust and scalable solutions, we are shifting our focus to our commercial product, which does include a freemium offering.
End-of-Life Service Date: 9/31/2023
What This Means for You:
Data Backup: We strongly encourage you to back up all your data stored on our platform before the Last Effective Service Date.
Transition Plans: We recommend transitioning to our commercial product, which offers both premium and freemium plans. Our support team is available to assist you in making this transition. At this time only LoRaWAN devices will be able to be migrated.
We deeply appreciate your business and support over the years and understand that this transition may cause inconveniences.
Use the following form to reach out to us: Support Form
Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.
End Quote
Link to original & thread
Had been a work-horse/go to platform for me for simple quick and dirty dashboards, client and student demo’s, community projects etc since my earliest days with LoRa/LoRaWAN so very sorry to see it go! Fare well old friend!
Links to the rest of the devices at the top of the page.
Started out life using LPP, then went to a more efficient payload format that used FB, translated to LPP and relayed to Cayenne, now all on FB. So plenty of code experience around the subject.
Turn own company’s inaction in to reason - more like an excuse!
Leaving aside the parochial date format that lacks clarity, this timescale is an excellent reason to never trust anything that Cayenne / MyDevices ever does ever.
As the owner of this website, I can definitely vouch for this one! Cayenne support is readily integrated, and except for hosting and a few blobs of code soup, it is mostly “plug-and-play” with regards to CayenneLPP formatting and widgets used.
Some parts like maps are still under mostly-active development (sneak peek attached below!), whenever I can spare a day here or there
Even then they clearly havent waited to ‘flip the switch’! Several devices and associated dashboards had been degrading for a while; days, weeks, even months? before announcement, - one of my main trackers had stopped presenting GPS info in Overview weeks ago, even though data still visible streaming in under Data tab view, but have now done a sweep of a number of sensors to look at recent historic presentation info and associated graphing and all have charts (e.g. for Temp sensors) that stop with last effective transmission on charts between 19:15 and 19:35 GMT Sept 1st!
Not everyone has the time, inclination or chops to do that.
The fundamental problem is that if we use a service that is provided for free and the company gifting that service doesn’t make an obvious return on that - either by signups from the free tier or referrals etc - then eventually they will see the service as an unnecessary overhead. Or even a sufficient drain on resources to cause actual harm to the running of the business.
I could spend the weekend scripting a sign up system to duplicate my web hook to database to FreeBoard. Regardless of paid for or free or trial period, I’d expect to be inundated with support questions as we know that people ask first and read the docs only when prompted. And if I had the temerity to charge for it, I’d expect an inbox full of messages anywhere between putting forward a case for a freebie all the way through to the whole Capitalist Pig rant.
It’s a real debate in my office - the web hook processing code was written from the beginning to import Cayenne LPP data - I’m not aware of any dashboard service that supports LPP and as there are so many dashboard services that no one service is going to spend time creating the routines to attract people who weren’t previously paying for the service & as there are many dashboard providers, the dilution over the many companies reduces the potential dramatically.
Once setup, a SaaS still needs maintenance. By asking people to pay, they have to make a commitment to doing things “properly” - like following the tutorials & docs. If they don’t pay, they can just dick about with it all as there is no cost to them, other than the most precious cost of all, the waste of their own time. About the only compromise I can think of is a token £/$/€1 payment on sign-up and normally billing to start after 7 days. If they organise themselves, they can be up & running very quickly with such a simple service, kick the tires and if it’s not for them, they’ve only spent a trivial sum but have shown some commitment. Providing a no-card free trial just attracts signups that go no where rapidly but inevitably attract the most support workload that isn’t paid for.
It would be exceptionally interesting if TTN put some hard restrictions on the number of devices / applications that we get for everyone, regardless of their status. If a (not-for-profit) community is making good use of the service, they will be attracting funds for gateways, backhaul, devices etc. So finding 20 cents a month per device shouldn’t be a stretch - and perhaps help them focus on what they deploy. If @wienkegiezeman & @johan were feeling so inclined, they could go with 10 cents a month for a bona-fide community install and stick the rest of us with just 10 free devices, 1 MQTT connection, 1 web hook and that’s it. Because in this current economic climate, that would go along way to ensure the continued existence of TTN.
Even with that kind of money people will expect support and service guarantees. And that that price the earnings won’t cover the cost.
Most communities I know don’t have any funds but rely on members supplying the resources and paying for them. As one of those community members I’m out of pocket considerably for the gateways as well as recurring cost. If someone is going to add additional cost to the picture the incentive to keep things operational could be dwindling fast. For now I don’t mind a hobby costing money, however there is a limit. I suspect adding those cost for TTN will see a rapid increase in Chirpstack deployments all over the place.
I agree. “Return” is a very broad concept here. For VC backed companies (like myDevices) the returns are definitely as you say. In the case of The Things Network though, we never expected short term and monetary returns. I think we striked a good balance between the community and The Things Industries contributing, and the figures are positive and so this is sustainable. The outliers who are deploying large commercial deployments on the community network are chased and migrate them. Non-commercial use cases, also the larger ones, are always welcome on TTN.
In case you were using Cayenne for tracking applications, check out our tracking platform IoT Wonderland https://www.iotwonderland.com .
It has Cayenne LPP decoding built in (for GPS locations plus a few other parameters) and is free for a limited number of devices. There is no need to tinker with payload decoders etc. Just enable the according TTS webhook template for easy integration between TTS and IoT Wonderland.
We also support other devices and payloads (Dragino, Digital Matter, Mokosmart etc.)
Even though not using CLPP the Cayenne platform also provides (correction provided!) direct support for the original Semtech/iMST LoRaMOTEs & MOTE II’s, which was great for TTN community coverage mapping and GW site planning (and indeed for much of my early consulting and commercial work ) as TTN didnt/doesnt have direct decoder support(#) - that was one of the early reasons why I made heavy use of myDevices/Cayenne and refered many users to it… generating a lot of biz and referals for them, especially once they launched their “IoT in a Box” offering, even though they likely had no way of identifying it was via me or tracking the lead back.
Does
Have support for these? Looked at the “full list” IoT Wonderland and nothing there so not travelling hopeful.
I will likely pitch up on a platform that can support those devices natively as still my ‘gold standard’ for survey/reference work as a very well known quantity after 8+ years
(#) If any one has a decoder for these for TTN please PM me - never found one called out on forum - so whilst I could capture fine through Cayenne I could never e.g. decode in TTN then share onto TTNMapper etc. where data from some of my other e.g. Dragino & RAK trackers could contribute to TTN Community coverage database.
Hi @pe1mew , If you have the Adeunis Field Test device in mind - that one is already supported. Documentation is in the make and will be available very soon. The process is simple: Just register, add the IoT Wonderland webhook integration on TTN, add the device on Wonderland using its DEVEUI, and you are ready to go. You may also need to select the Adeunis decoder in the drop-down. Some devices are auto-recognized.
@Jeff-UK We aim at supporting all LoRaWAN-based tracking devices out of the box, so if you can provide me with documentation regarding the payload of your devices then we’d be glad to implement the decoder.
not sure why my personal account @iot_andi is used in these posts rather than @copernitech even though I’m logged in with the company account… aplogies, I am rather new on the forum here
Thanks for the PM @Jeff-UK. @pe1mew , if you provide me with some additional information (particularly your username and relevant DEVEUIs, then I’ll have a look at what’s going on there). Please also send me a PM for that.
(avoid need to update devices already deployed using CLPP)
- so whilst I could capture fine through Cayenne I could never e.g. decode in TTN then share onto TTNMapper etc. where data from some of my other e.g. Dragino & RAK trackers could contribute to TTN Community coverage database.