☢ thinx-device-api

IoT Device Management Server running on node.js.

Build Status

CircleCI Build status

Component	Status
thinx-device-api
arduino-docker-build
platformio-docker-build
mongoose-docker-build
micropython-docker-build
nodemcu-docker-build

The CircleCI build is limited and therefore returns mostly bad results. Closer look may show better numbers.

The Purpose

• Update IoT device by pushing a code to a Git repository. We'll build it.
• Secure per-device parametrization and reverse-engineering security controls.
• Swap operating system for another over-the-air.
• Migrate multiple devices at once between WiFi networks.
• THiNX provides complete IoT infrastructure for your device (where the data storage and visualisation can be fully up to you).
• automatic updates for headless devices, or semi-automatic (with user consent after build and tests succeed)

As a user I have already many IoT new and/or legacy devices at home and new platforms are coming every day.

Sometimes we need to change WiFi credentials on a wireless switch mounted on a ceiling. The other day I we want to swap whole firmware for new one, but not always to rewrite working legacy Lua or Micropython code to PlatformIO.

That's why we have decided to create the über-platform: THiNX.

Supported hardware

Currently the platform supports building firmware for Arduino, PlatformIO (also with ESP-IDF), NodeMCU, Mongoose, Micropython and features JavaScript library that is intended to use on any hardware capable of running a Node.js server.

Features

• Remote Things Management console for monitoring devices, attaching source code, pushing data, managing incoming payloads and firmware updates.

• Supports running in Docker Swarm, allowing to pass firmware-builds to specific nodes, etc.

• Continuous Integration practices to update device apps/configurations from a GitHub repository using commit hooks.

• Building secure MQTTS infrastructure as an optional side-chain transport layer.

• Device registration endpoint while storing device data using CouchDB server and Redis session-store.

• API is a back-end data provider (security agent) for Management Console Application.

• Provides control to a dockerized build servers and pushes new firmware versions to client applications (FCM push) and devices (MQTT).

• Provides HTTP-to-HTTPS proxy to secure legacy IoT devices that are not capable of TLS and/or AES-level encryption.

• Allows transfer of device ownership (e.g. for pre-configured devices).

• Custom firmware builder for MongooseOS, NodeMCU and Micropython (allow module selection, add THiNX as an OS-level library)

• Transfer device to another owner along with sources/firmware.

• Device status messages can be transformed using custom JavaScript lambda-style functions.

• Supports OAuth login with Google and GitHub.

• Supports LoRaWan server integration.

• Supports Rollbar, Sqreen and Crisp.chat integrations.

• Message-queue integration using single broker across many instances.

• Supports Traefik for SSL offloading.

• Supports external changes to device Environment object using API/API-Key. Changes in Environment for a firmware build cause firmware update even if the version of firmware is same, allowing seamless change of WiFi credentials or device build attributes).

• Mosquitto with GoAuth plugin for seamless device support for 100>10000 devices. Authentication backend can be split, or shared between multiple instances (production, staging, test, etc.).

• Docker Container or Docker Swarm Service-based parallel distributed builds with controllable paralellism. Suggested is one worker per node, where the load is managed by Docker Swarm.

Supported IoT Platforms

• PlatformIO and Arduino IDE (ESP8266P/ESP32)

• Micropython

• Lua

• MongooseOS

• NodeJS (Mac/Linux/Windows)

• Tested on Wemos D1 Mini, Wemos D1 Mini Pro, RobotDyn D1, RobotDyn D1 Mini, RobotDyn MEGA WiFi and various NodeMCU (Lolin, AI-THINKER) boards with Mongoose, Arduino Core, ESP-IDF, Lua and Micropython-based core firmwares...

• Expected: Arduino and BigClown with networking support

Base THiNXLib Platform Library in C++:

THiNXLib for ESP8266

THiNXLib for ESP32

THiNX Platform Library repositories for various IDEs and firmwares:

Platform.io

Arduino

NodeMCU/Lua

Micropython

MongooseOS

NodeJS

Custom Firmwares

With built-in THiNX Client Library:

NodeMCU/Lua

Micropython

Arduino, Plaform.io and MongooseOS are firmwares by nature.

Dockerized Firmware Builders

PlatformIO

Arduino

MongooseOS

NodeMCU/Lua

Micropython

Prerequisites for running own THiNX Server

• Linux Server (min. 2 GB RAM, 32GB SSD, Ubuntu)
• Docker (supports both docker-compose quick start or scalable Swarm deployment)

Port mapping

• API runs on HTTP port 7442 (HTTPS 7443)
• MQTTS runs on port 8883
• Admin runs on HTTP/HTTPS port (80/443)
• Status Transformers (internal network only, 7475)

Logging

Use your favourite service and log-sender agent. Tested successfully with Logz.io, Instana and Sematext

Installation

Prerequisites

Suggested:

• FQDN – Fully Qualified Domain Names (if you're testing on localhost, configure conf/config.json to set debug: { allow_http_login: true } )

  • api.yourdomain.com – THiNX API
  • console.yourdomain.com – THiNX Management Console

• Mailgun account (recently added)

• Rollbar integration

Optional:

• Google Analytics integration
• Sqreen integration
• Slack integration
• Crisp.chat integration

Management Console

You need to BUILD YOUR OWN CONSOLE Docker image, because the build injects various static variables specific for your environment (e.g. API Keys) into HTML on build (see .circleci/config.yml for list of required build-args until this is documented).

For that reason, no pre-built public thinxcloud/console Docker Hub Image is/will be available.

Using Docker Compose

Make sure you have valid directory structure available at /mnt/data (default) and edit the .env file to suit your needs.

You don't need Mailgun for developer installation, just copy-paste the activation URL from api log using docker-compose logs -f while creating your first admin account.

git clone http://github.com/suculent/thinx-device-api cd thinx-device-api cp .env.dist .env nano .env ./copy-envs.sh docker-compose up -d --build

Optionally see the ./circleci/config.yml for reference on installation steps.

Using Docker Swarm on Manager Node

THiNX expects Traefik load-balancer (e.g. with Swarmpit) in Docker Swarm. Example swarm compose file contains appropriate labels for Traefik in Swarm mode.

THiNX also expects some kind of shared storage folder in /mnt/data default path. We have this mounted using GluserFS across all nodes so it does not matter where you run thinx app, console, mosquitto broker, worker or builders... all flatfile data are always available everywhere.

Install GlusterFS to make sure /mnt is available on all nodes in cluster.

Start THiNX on manager node:

git pull [email protected]/suculent/thinx-device-api -b swarm
cd thinx-device-api
docker network create --scope=swarm nat
docker stack deploy -c ./docker-swarm.yml

It's perfectly possible to run multiple instances of THiNX in Swarm. Just keep in mind that in order to support legacy HTTP transport devices, you need to have THiNX API port set differently for each instance (e.g. 7442 for production, 7441 for staging) because Swarm does not allow exposing same port twice across different services in same swarm.

GitHub Webhook support

You can direct your GitHub web-hooks to https://rtm.thinx.cloud/api/githook after adding a valid deploy key from GitHub to THiNX.

When adding Source, you can enter GitHub Secret to make sure incoming webhooks will be signed and validated.

Endpoints

See 03-test.sh. There is no point of maintaining documentation for this at current stage of development and user base zero.

Upgrading

After upgrading from versions before 1.1.5200, you may have issue with accessing CouchDB database. It's known issue, which can be fixed by editing the /opt/couchdb/etc/vm.args file inside the couchdb container. Just change the auto-generated domain on last line to couchdb@localhost and you should regain your access.

Development hints

In case you don't need all the services running, you can start them as local containers and map them to compose service names using /etc/hosts.

Redis

docker run -ti -p 6379:6379 -e REDIS_PASSWORD=changeme! thinxcloud/redis:latest

CouchDB

docker run -p 5984:5984 -e COUCHDB_USER=rtmtest -e COUCHDB_PASSWORD=rtmtest couchdb:3.1.0

Platforms State of Union

Overall

Platform libraries are now stabilised on the basic level, approaching first release version 1.0 with default HTTPS with optional fallback to HTTP for development.

THiNX has now passed version 1.0 upgrading to swarm/docker-compose installation with separate container services (CouchDB, Redis, Transformers, THiNX, Traefik and optional monitoring services).

Data and configuration are being moved to configurable location, which is by default /mnt/data:

deploy/ # build products ready for deployment to devices
mosquitto/ # auth, log, config, data, ...
repos/ # fetched/watched repositories
ssh_keys/ # will be moved to vault and provided exlusively to builder
ssl/ # shared SSL certificates, may be generated by Traefik/ACME/Letsencrypt

...etc

Arduino ESP8266/ESP32

• Docker builder works.
• OTA update works.

PlatformIO

• Docker builder works.
• OTA update is ready to be tested.

Pine 64

• On horizon, builder and platform support is ready, waits for firmware...

Micropython

• Docker builder works fine but needs tighter integration with sources.
• Deployment is not verified, therefore update cannot be tested now.

NodeMCU

• File-based update has been pre-tested. Docker builder works fine but needs tighter integration with sources ($workdir).
• Deployment is not verified, therefore update cannot be tested.
• Will probably deprecate, because the toolset has not been updated for almost 3 years.

License

1.