Integrations with Third-Party Services
In addition to HTTP and MQTT integrations, network servers may offer other integrations with third-party services. While these will leverage the HTTP or MQTT protocols they are configured so that you can directly integrate with specific platforms and provide the exact information they require, thus avoiding the need for you to run middleware.
The following integrations are some of the most common, and all of these are supported by the Semtech Network Server, so you can try them out.
Amazon Simple Notification Service (Amazon SNS)
An Amazon SNS integration forwards events sent by a device to an Amazon SNS topic. From there, you can add subscriptions to the topic to configure the events to be forwarded to other destinations. The Semtech Network Server supplies you with the AWS SNS integration to integrate with Amazon SNS.
You can send data associated with an event from Amazon SNS directly to a person or group of people using the Amazon SNS mobile text messaging (SMS) integration, or the Amazon SNS email notifications integration.
You can also send data associated with an event to other AWS services, including AWS Lambda functions, Amazon SQS queues, and Amazon Kinesis Data Firehose. From these services, you can process and send data to any appropriate AWS service, such as Amazon Timestream, a time-series database ideally suited to IoT data.
For more information on these integrations, read the following:
- Details of the AWS SNS integration used in the Semtech Network Server (Reading time: 9 minutes)
- The full Amazon SNS documentation
Azure Service Bus
An Azure Service Bus integration forwards events to an Azure Service Bus topic or queue. From there, you can add subscriptions to configure the events to be forwarded to other destinations. The Semtech Network Server provides software for this type of integration.
Events sent to a Service Bus queue or topic can be received by an Azure Function and then passed onto another service for further processing.
For more a more in-depth understanding, read the following:
- Details of the Azure Service-Bus integration used in the Semtech Network Server (Reading time: 6 minutes)
- The full Azure Service Bus documentation
Google Cloud Pub/Sub
A Google Cloud Pub/Sub integration forwards events to Google Cloud Pub/Sub. From there, events can be sent on to services, including Cloud Functions, the streaming analytics service DataFlow, and the cloud data warehouse BigQuery.
For more information about this integration offering, read
- Details of the GCP Pub/Sub integration used in the Semtech Network Server (Reading time: 7 minutes)
- The full GCP Pub/Sub documentation
ThingsBoard
ThingsBoard is an open-source IoT platform that provides the following functionality: device management, data collection, data processing, and data visualization. ThingsBoard can be used to send email or SMS messages to users when events are observed, display the data in dashboards using widgets, and write rules to trigger actions in devices when an event occurs, (e.g., turn on a light when motion is detected). All devices in ThingsBoard are interoperable.
A ThingsBoard integration sends device attributes and telemetry to a ThingsBoard instance, which allows you to use LoRaWAN devices within your ThingsBoard instance. The Semtech Network Server includes the ThingsBoard.io integration software.
For a deeper understanding of, and hands-on practice with, a ThingsBoard integration, explore the following resources.
- In the Hands-On Lab: How to Build & Deploy a LoRaWAN® Network you can read the section Configuring ThingsBoard and ChirpStack. The lab also shows how to use this integration with the Semtech Network Server.
- In our Hands-On Lab: Build an End-to-End Solution Using the LoRaWAN® Protocol and LoRa Edge™ LR1110 you can read the section Build a Dashboard using ThingsBoard. If you have the LR1110 Dev Kit, you can also follow through this entire tutorial and learn how to use ThingsBoard. If you do not have the LR1110 Dev Kit you can still read the tutorial and learn how to connect the Semtech Network Server to ThingsBoard to understand the basics of creating a dashboard.
- Read the details of the ThingsBoard.io integration used in the Semtech Network Server (Reading time: 1 minute)
- Read the full ThingsBoard documentation
Additional Options
Network server providers generally support a number of different integrations. Check the documentation and integrations pages for your chosen network server to see which integrations are offered. In addition to the integrations mentioned in this section, the Semtech Network Server offers a number of other integrations, including integrations for the InfluxDB database and the PilotThings platform.
If you need to integrate a service that is not supported by your network server, you can write a piece of middleware to pass the data from one of the supported integrations through to your chosen service. A low-cost method would be to use an AWS Lambda, Azure Function, or Google Cloud Function, that can be connected using a relevant platform integration (for the Semtech Network Server, this would be the AWS SNS integration for AWS Lambda, Azure Service-Bus for Azure Function, and GCP Pub/Sub for Google Cloud Function). Alternatively, you could either use a web server with one of the HTTP integrations, or an MQTT broker with the MQTT integration.