Summary: When I changed my gateway from eu1 to nam1 MQTT stopped working, but when I changed back to eu1 MQTT works.
I started transitioning from v2 to v3 using the eu1 cluster. Since I am in North America I’ve been moving things over to the nam1 cluster. Everything moved fine except MQTT. My gateway connects to nam1 and I see data from my devices arrive in the TTN v3 console. My MQTT client connects to nam1 but I never see any data from devices. When I switch the gateway back to eu1 I get MQTT data from my devices. Any ideas? Anyone getting MQTT data from nam1?
[SOLVED] Created a new application in the nam1 community (cluster) and added new devices and now it works.
So even though I could see the application I created in the eu1 cluster in the nam1 cluster, it didn’t fully work in nam1.
So what are the benefits of v3 again? Because I’ve spent hours migrating from v2. And this is for a hobby, that I do for fun (sarcasm). Feels like alpha testing.
Just got a Particle Boron with a generous amount of free cell data and it was much, MUCH easier to get setup and running. Stark contrast to the TTN “fun” of piles of poorly documented settings, keys, inconsistencies and blindly tweaking and hoping it works.
I like the more open and community vibe of TTN, but you better get it working better and easier or cellular and nb-iot is going to wipe you out.
It’s upgrading to professional, so more facilities for paid users, which nicely cascade down to those that use it for free.
I can’t imagine why anyone would rush to migrate - I haven’t moved any deployments but I’m doing a lot of preparation. And I’d certainly not rush to use a whole other continent’s set of servers and then be surprised there were some foibles in doing that when I move to my own continent’s servers that are run for free.
As I’m implying above, this is a transition phase. When v3 was made available in January that weekend I setup a gateway and some devices and it all just worked. Took 1.5 hours to move my Data Storage API calls plus my v2 HTTP Integrations over to v3. Since then there has been a lot of documentation & testing for migrations, plus some planned enhancements.
If NB-IOT (next to useless in the UK) and cellular suddenly not charging per device and stop charging for any infrastructure, I’m sure they will become viable for the use cases that LoRaWAN devices are put to. Oh, wait, no, they never can, how many typical cellular devices can send data for 3 or 4 years on the original batteries?
@descartes:
I can’t imagine why anyone would rush to migrate
Because TTN told me to. This is the banner displayed above the V2 console:
Warning The Things Network is moving to The Things Stack (V3) and will shut down V2 clusters in 2021. Start moving your applications and devices to a v3 cluster! Click here to read more
@descartes :
And I’d certainly not rush to use a whole other continent’s set of servers and then be surprised there were some foibles in doing that when I move to my own continent’s servers that are run for free.
TTNs migration instructions linked to the eu1 cluster console. I didn’t discover the nam1 cluster until a week later.
I get that V3 is in development and as such things will break or be changed (should you really be pushing people to migrate so soon?). And I get that documentation takes resources and isn’t fun. But if you’re telling people to move from v2 to v3 you need to supply clear, correct information so the migration is as easy as possible. On this front TTN is doing poorly.
@descartes
If NB-IOT (next to useless in the UK) and cellular suddenly not charging per device and stop charging for any infrastructure, I’m sure they will become viable for the use cases that LoRaWAN devices are put to. Oh, wait, no, they never can, how many typical cellular devices can send data for 3 or 4 years on the original batteries?
Cellular used to have pricing that was not friendly to hobbyists, but the new Particle EtherSIM is. Giving away that much free data doesn’t make sense to me, maybe it won’t last, but I’m willing to give it a try.
Sure, cellular isn’t a good choice for battery powered devices. But that’s not the only choice. My devices are solar / battery powered so I can tolerate the extra power for cellular. So the choice for me is: Do I increase the size of the solar panel and battery for cellular or deploy gateways and deal with the complexity and other issues with TTN?
It doesn’t say you have to do it now now. And if you click the link it says it will be by the end of the year. And there are a whole host of posts on the logistics & desirability of moving gateways.
There was a North American cluster for v2, a little research would have revealed the plans for v3 clusters along with the almost simultaneous existence of the NAM1 cluster. I think this indicates rushing.
We, the community, are emphatically telling people to NOT migrate v2 gateways until nearer the end of v2 as devices on v2 will be left stranded. Again, many forum posts on this. And no one is pushing anyone.
You, me and everyone else on this forum is TTN because TTN is a set of servers provided for free by TTI for us to use. As an adjunct to their commercial work, we get to read the documentation and other outputs. Depending on where you are are at in terms of experience & technique depends on the results you get. None of us has any rights to anything and if we want to improve things then lead by example.
So YOU, by virtue of using TTN, are in fact telling people to not move to v2 to v3 just yet and YOU could be part of the solution that develops the documentation.
That’s yourself you are criticising here.
As for your choices, if GSM fits your needs in terms of power and tolerates a subscription of any sort, fine. LoRaWAN has many moving parts, but deploying known good devices with known good gateways with an integration to an established dashboard provider is pretty prescriptive. If you want to mix things up, be prepared to get your hands dirty.
@descartes I’m just noting that TTN told me to “Start moving your applications and devices to a v3 cluster” because they “will shut down V2 clusters in 2021” and that as I endeavored to do so, following their links and documentation, I ran into multiple problems that I spent hours figuring out.
I am gratefully for this forum that helped me immensely. And I have provided some help back where I can (Setting up Basic Station protocol on RAK7240 and RAK7249 industrial gateways - #11 by KanyonKris).
Yes, I could have saved myself some time and trouble had I perused the forums first, but the documentation made it seem pretty easy so I dove in. I’m willing to improve the v3 documentation but I see no mechanism for providing feedback/corrections. Other community projects I’ve been involved with have made this easier, like forking a github repository and submitting pull requests.
Perhaps my criticism was too harsh. TTN is a nice system (albeit pretty complex). Just wanted to note that as a casual user operating a public gateway I found upgrading to v3 more difficult and frustrating than it could/should have been.