This is the cloud infrastructure for the Venue Environment System. It is composed of two microservices that fulfill different tasks.
This service is responsible for collecting data from the LoRaWAN network. It is a Spring Boot application that uses a WebSocket connection to receive data from the LoRaWAN network. It then parses the data and stores it in a MongoDB database.
This service is responsible for providing access to the data for the frontend. It is a Spring Boot application that provides a REST API to access the data stored in the MongoDB database. It provides endpoints to access the data and further specifications can be found in the API documentation.
The system allows for two ways of operating it, either through raw Java or through Docker containers. Our workflow includes the use of Docker containers, but the system can be run without them as well. The only requirement is that the secrets are provided to the application. The following sections describe how to get the servicces running in both environments.
The application can be run through pure Java. Thanks to the Spring Boot framework, the application is packaged as a JAR
file that is executable through the java -jar command. The JAR file contains both the compiled bytecode for this
application and the JAR files for all the dependencies, so it is self-contained. It contains a custom class loader
courtesy of the Spring Boot framework that allows it to load JAR nested within the JAR file itself, a capability that
is not present in the default Java class loader.
In order for the setup to be complete, the application will look for a file called secrets.properties
under directory config/ in the current working directory (the one where the java -jar command is being executed
from). Make sure the file exists and contains the correct values. The format of the file is one key-value pair per
line as key=value.
Docker is a containerization technology that allows for the creation of isolated environments that contain all the dependencies and configuration needed to run an application. This means that the application can be run by spinning up a container from the images published to DockerHub as ieris19/sep4-lorawan-service and ieris19/sep4-web-service
The images setup a suitable environment for the application to run in, but they still need to be provided with the
secrets. This is done by passing them as environmental variables to the container, either as part of the docker run
command or as part of a .env file. Regardless of the method, the container should start up and run the application
smoothly once the secrets are provided.
The application requires to be provided with two secrets in order to run. These are the MongoDB URL and the LoRaWAN URL. Both of these are URLs that point to the respective services, and they should contain the user/password or token needed to authenticate with the service.
The MongoDB URL should point to a MongoDB database, and the application will create everything it needs to run in it. MongoDB Atlas is a good option for this, as it provides a free tier that is more than enough for this application.
MongoDB URLs are written in the format of mongodb+srv://<user>:<password>@<cluster>.mongodb.net (assuming the
database is hosted in MongoDB Atlas). The user and password are the ones used to authenticate with the database, and
the cluster is the name of the cluster in MongoDB Atlas. It is recommended to create a new user for this application
for both security and to prevent the connection from being dropped due to logging in from multiple locations.
The LoRaWAN URL should point to a WebSocket endpoint that will provide the data to the application. The application
will receive data from the WebSocket and send replies to it as well. Remember to include the protocol in the URL
(e.g. ws:// or wss://).
The secrets.properties file should look as follows, with the values replaced with the actual secrets
(Please note that in the placeholders, we have placed the environmental variables names that we use in the Docker
environment, so you can use them if you are running the application in a Docker):
lorawan.url=${lorawan_url}
mongodb.url=${mongodb_url}