Can IoT sensors be in any network?

[PhilipDAth]

Can you have all the sensors in one network (makes it easy to do access control for users who are not normally managing the network), or do they have to be in the same network as the MR/MV that is receiving their data?

[MerakiDave]

Hi @PhilipDAth, at the moment, both the sensor and the gateway do need to be in the same Dashboard network.  I will check the Feature Request log in case others are asking to have a separate "sensor network" construct in the Dashboard where the gateways might exist in their existing/previous networks, but I'm not sure if that's a major lift as far as feature requests go.  

[PhilipDAth]

I have a customer interested in using the IoT sensors in their refrigerated truck deliveries.  The deliveries start at the distribution centre but could be delivered to any of their stores.  They would like to be able to track the temperature from preparation to final delivery.  The IoT sensors seem to have a reasonable amount of "offline" storage making them suitable for use in vehicles.

So that's another use case for being able to decouple an IoT sensor from a specific networks base station.

In their case, I see all the IoT sensors being in a single network, and their food safety people being given only access to that network.

[BlakeRichardson]

@PhilipDAth While the sensors might work in this situation they haven't been designed for this. Not being IP68 rated you might see early failures due to condensation etc. 

[PhilipDAth]

I think you are right @BlakeRichardson .  I think I'm going to have to wait for the "second generation" of IoT sensors.

However, future requirements will drive back end design decisions now.

[BlakeRichardson]

@PhilipDAth  That or if the sensors are cheap enough just trial some and see how they go in the hope V2 units are IP rated. 

My guess is they are aimed at and will only be aimed at indoor data centre use cases as there are already other vendors making specialised sensors for refrigeration. 

[MerakiDave]

Correct that they might work fine but were not specifically designed for the vehicle use case (vibration hardened for example) but that said, MT10/12/20 are the first 3 products in a new product family, naturally more will come, we just don't know what we might be surprised with in 2021 😀  If you did leverage them for that use case, I would not expect any sudden failures, but perhaps premature failure due to the cumulative effects of the mobile, non-indoor environment. 

[jasonob]

Sensors are associated with a network and not with a specific base station, so if you had a network that spanned multiple sites and the sensor moved between the two sites, it would connect and upload data when it came within range of a MV/MR at a different site

Cheers!

Jason

[DarrenOC]

Good question