Devices

This section can help you understand the differences between ABP and OTAA activation modes for LORaWAN end devices, and comprehend why using OTAA is recommended.

This section contains instructions for adding devices in The Things Stack.

The Things Industries and Microchip developed a security solution for LoRaWAN that enables secure key provisioning and secure cryptographic operations using secure elements.

This section contains best practices for building connected devices which use The Things Stack as a Network Server.

Class B end devices listen for downlink messages during ping slots. This allows applications to send messages to devices at predefined time slots, rather than waiting for a Class A uplink. When combined with multicast groups, this allows applications to send periodic downlinks to many devices at the same time.

Class C end devices continuously listen for downlink messages. This allows applications to send messages to devices at any time, instead of having to wait for a Class A uplink. When combined with multicast groups, this allows applications to send immediate downlinks to many devices at the same time. This guide shows how to enable or disable Class C for an and device, and how to work with multicast groups.

Device claiming is a mechanism that transfers devices securely from one application to another. This section provides guides for making devices claimable and claiming them.

The Things Stack keeps a queue of downlink messages per device. Applications can keep pushing downlink messages or replace the queue with a list of downlink messages. You can schedule a downlink using the CLI, MQTT or HTTP webhooks. This guide shows how to interact with the downlink queue from the command-line interface (CLI).

End device templates define the blueprint of a device. Templates can be used to create one device or many devices at once. Templates allow using common values for many devices, such as a device profile. End device templates are primarily targeted at device makers and service providers who are managing and onboarding large amounts of devices. In this section, learn how to create templates or convert from vendor-specific manifest files, how to map and combine templates, how to assign EUIs and how to execute the templates to create the end devices.

The Things Stack can generate QR codes for your devices, which helps identifying the devices and allows for claiming the device. This guide shows how to list QR code formats and generate QR codes with the CLI.

This section provides guidelines for configuring MAC settings for end devices from the CLI.

It is also possible to create a Class B or Class C multicast group to send downlink messages to a group of end devices. A multicast group is a virtual ABP device (i.e. shared session keys), does not support uplink, confirmed downlink nor MAC commands.