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I was asked to implement a system for collecting data from a sound sensor. I have no idea where to start so I'm asking for some guidelines since IoT is completely new to me. The place where the data will be collected already has sound sensors installed and some kind of "gateways" that receive sensors data via Bluetooth. This is the only info they provided me. I have a photo of this "gateway" but no model info or any other, so I don't have a clue on what to do with it. This is the device that receives data from sensor:

Device photos

As seen on the photos, the device only has an antena, an Ethernet entry and a micro usb entry. The other sides of the decide have no interfaces or information of any kind.

My main concerns now are:

  • Is there a way to read from this device using Java, Javascript(Node) or C#? I know what to do once I can read from device, so, not asking for coding tips.
  • Does this device or the sensor require some kind of configuration? How can I perform it?
  • If someone knows other kind of devices (sensor and gateway) that could easy the task for me, can you show me? Because it's possible to buy new devices and install them if this is an easy and faster way of developing the system.
  • I was thinking there may be devices ready to install that require few configuration ( maybe through a GUI) and allow fetching the data from a Port (by listening UDP packages) or even some kind of API.

I really thank you for any tips that can help me on this.

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  • @jsotola I only provided pictures of 3 sides because none of the other sides have any kind of information. That's why I'm asking for help. As the people who gave me the device told me the sensor data is received from it I was wandering how do I collect data from it. I'm sorry if I didn't made myself clear the first time.
    – avaros
    Jul 17, 2020 at 19:46
  • Hey, welcome to the site! We do need more information to go on... do you see any servicing screws on your device? Can you open the device up and get some clear pictures of the circuit board? Any model numbers inside could be useful. Please edit your question with further details; without this, I'm afraid we can't do much; your best bet will be to talk to the people who gave you the device. Thanks!
    – anonymous2
    Jul 18, 2020 at 2:44
  • the MAC address on the case belongs to a device made by espressif.com
    – jsotola
    Jul 18, 2020 at 6:19
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    @anonymous2 I will open the device and post photos of the circuit board. Unfortunately, the people who gave me the device don't have any more info to give me. That's what's making my life so difficult. And that's why I'm open to other suggestions than this device if you know some. Thanks so much.
    – avaros
    Jul 18, 2020 at 6:34

1 Answer 1

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The gateway is an AprBrother BLE Gateway V4.

The gateway can be connected via Ethernet (it supports PoE as well) or WiFi.

It receives BLE advertisements and then sends them to a server using a variety of protocols (HTTP, websockets or MQTT). The server to send the data to, the protocol to use and other settings can be configured with a small app you should find on the AprBrother page linked above. You can also download the source of the app from GitHub, it’s a small Electron app.

Messages are encoded using MessagePack so they need to be decoded first for processing. You then need to know the format of the data sent in the advertisements. You haven’t provided any info about the sensors so we can’t help you with that.

So basically, you need to set up an http or websockets server, or use an MQTT broker and connect to it as a subscriber, and then process the data.

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  • I'm very grateful for that information. Now I have an idea from where to start. I will try to knoe more about the sensor, maybe ask them to send me one of the sensors installed. I start exploring this devices. I'll update this as I get more info. Thanks.
    – avaros
    Jul 18, 2020 at 13:24

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