Post Deployment Configuration

This section provides the information necessary to get started with The Things Stack after it is deployed via AWS Marketplace using AWS CloudFormation.

DNS Configuration

In order to access the Console/API of the The Things Stack, the domain name chosen during deployment must be mapped to the public IP address of the CloudFormation stack. This section provides details on how to do that.

1. Log in AWS Console and open the CloudFormation resource and click on your recently deployed stack.
2. Navigate to the Outputs tab and copy the value of the PublicIP field.

Now, login to the Domain Name Management window of the Domain Name Registrar to which your preferred Domain is registered. Create a DNS A record with the parameters shown below.

If you are using a sub-domain:

For example, if your PublicIP value is 3.12.14.15 and your sub-domain is lorawan.mycompany.com, then navigate to the management tab for the domain mycompany.com and perform the following mapping:

There will be an initial propagation delay for this value to be updated. You can check the status via a DNS lookup using either an online tool or using a command line tool (ex: nslookup).

Once the domain has been propagated, the DNS Lookup will show that your Domain (or sub-domain) is pointing to the PublicIP value.

SSL Certificates

As a security measure, plaintext access to the Console/API is disabled. In order to serve requests securely, The Things Stack has built-in support to automatically request, serve and renew SSL certificates.

Apart from the DNS mapping above, no additional steps are necessary for this.

Getting Started using the Console

Please check the Console guide to get quickly started with The Things Stack Console.

Getting Started using the Command Line Interface (CLI)

Please check the CLI guide to get quickly started with The Things Stack CLI.

SSH Access

In most cases, you will interact with The Things Stack only via the Console or the CLI. However, in case there is a need to directly access the EC2 instance, there is an option to do so via SSH.

SSH access is possible only via the IP addresses set using the Restrict SSH Access to IP Range parameter during deployment. Also, the SSH client needs access to the private key corresponding to the public key that was chosen in the SSH Key parameter during deployment. The SSH username is ec2-user.

For example, you can use the OpenSSH client via the terminal and login using:

ssh -i <private-key-file> ec2-user@PublicIP

Upon accessing the machine, navigate to the tti directory:

cd /tti

This directory is structured as follows:

├── acme                        # contains SSL certificates and related files
├── bootstrap                   # contains logs generated during deployment and restarts
└── lorawan-stack
    ├── config.yml              # The Things Stack Enterprise configuration
    ├── environment             # additional environment variables
    ├── lorawan-frequency-plans # contains a local copy of the LoRaWAN Frequency Plans Repository
    ├── public                  # contains the static assets
    └── tti-lw-stack            # The Things Stack Enterprise binary

The Things Stack binary is run as a systemd service. In order to check the logs, run the following:

sudo journalctl -f -u lorawan-stack.service

Routing LoRaWAN Traffic

Now that your stack has been successfully deployed, let’s look at how to connect a LoRaWAN gateway, register a LoRaWAN device and read traffic from this device.

Connecting a Gateway

Please check Gateways section to learn how to add gateways.

Registering a Device

Please check the Adding Devices guide.

AWS IoT

The Things Stack supports publishing of uplink messages directly to the AWS IoT suite. In order for this to work, the AWS IoT Telemetry option in the CloudFormation template must be set to true during the deployment phase.

Please check the guide on AWS IoT guide for more information.