Many of those in the community and I use TTN Mapper to determine the range we can get off our gateways. This website is able to give us a better indication to the potential distance a connection can reach than the 3km radius circles present on the TTN website for each gateway.
I propose the idea of using the data collected from TTN Mapper for the TTN community maps on the official website, allowing people to get a better understanding as to the distance a LoRaWAN connection can be made from. Alternatively, why doesn’t TTN promote TTN Mapper more? From what I have seen in the community, some people new to the network don’t know it exists and think those circles are the true range.
Is there a reason why such an implementation has not been done or a reason why it can’t be? TTN Mapper is a great resource, however in my opinion its full potential is limited by the fact that it is not implemented with TTN.
Also, I was curious as to why the TTN map on the homepage/map page of the website do not show these circles, but they are shown in the individual communities?
TTN Mapper data is already implemented on TTN website, however it is limited to the console of each individual gateway, which is inaccessible to the public and only able to be viewed by the owner/those with the given permissions.
To view it do the following:
Access the console of your gateway and make sure it is in the “Overview” tab
Scroll down and locate the map under “Location”
On the top right side of the map below the coordinates and furthest to the left, click the icon with the dot and two waves coming out each side. This icon when hovered over says “Togger Mapper Data”. An image of it is below:
View the map, which should have lines coming out from the gateway. This may take a second to load depending on your internet connection.
This unfortunate thing is that this data is unavailable to the public, unlike how it can be viewed in TTN Mapper. This still means that someone wanting to know if they can get a connection is left a bit in the dark. A public implementation would still be great and I wouldn’t think it would be too hard considering it is already in the console.
Honestly: I do not understand the issue. If I want to check for a connection, I go on TTNmapper, where any gw is available. Looking one by one does not make much sense, unless I am missing something…
My reasoning was that someone new to LoRaWAN may not know of TTN Mapper. If it was integrated in TTN for the public, it would be less likely that an individual would miss out on such information.
There is nothing wrong with TTN Mapper and its website operates as designed, it’s just that TTN is more known about to a novice than TTN Mapper. For example, I knew about TTN months before I knew about TTN Mapper. This meant for that period of time when I was new to the network and knew the least about it, I was a bit confused about why sometimes the blues circles around gateways were sometimes underestimations and at other times overestimations. I do now that this is an approximation about expected distance and is not unique for each gateway, however after finding TTN Mapper, I could more accurately determine where I was expecting to receive coverage.
Ok, I understand what you mean, however it is an external service, like many others (are you asking TTN to buy it?). It is particularly useful but there are a lot of things that the novice will not immediately know about TTN-connected external platforms. I saw TTN Mapper well before trying integrations with dashboards, for example.
I am not asking for TTN to buy it by any means. Is just that if it is already integrated in the gateway console, why can’t the same be done in the other maps on the main website, for example the one on the main page and the ones in community pages.
I can agree with you on the external platforms. I followed the same path.
