Devices
Overview
The BlueRange platform is at its heart a device management platform. This chapter offers an overview on how to add devices to the platform, view their information and remove them.
Enrollment
Before working with devices in our platform, you will have to enroll them firstly. Check our documentation regarding Enrollment for all necessary information.
Device Inventory
To get an overview of your devices, navigate to > Devices in our BlueRange Portal. You will see a list of all your enrolled devices, no matter in which network they are.
Use the options button for a single device to configure it or perform actions, or select multiple devices at once and use the bulk options button on the top to perform the same action for all of them.
You can also search, filter and sort the device list in the table header. For easier navigation we have also provided some device category tabs on the top to quickly find the device you are interested in.
Network View / Building View
You can also see the devices when navigating to a specific network by going to > Networks > "Your Network Name" > Devices. This will give you a list of all devices in this network. Also, they can be seen as part of a floor or room.
See Networks for more information.
Viewing Device Information
To get more information on a single device, you can either click on its name or double-click it on one of the floor plans. This will take you to the device information page. This page consists of a number of tabs depending on the features that the device supports.
Device Overview
The device information page displays general information about the device, its current position and its compliance status. From here, you can edit device information, apply actions and you can also use the identify button to activate a light or buzzer signal which helps you to determine the physical position of the device if you are nearby.
Device Details
The device details page contains more detailed information about the device and its status. Some of this information is collected during the initial device enrollment and the other information is always updated if the device reports a new firmware version or a new status. Some devices support the Refresh Device Info action on the overview page that you can manually trigger to get the latest state as soon as possible.
The information on this page varies greatly from device to device.
A BlueRange Gateway will show some generic information about its operating system and also some metrics about its running processes, etc,… Also, you are able to see its connectivity to other mesh nodes and its network connectivity.
The device details page for mesh nodes shows the available battery power (unless the node is connected to a power outlet), also you can see generic information such as the vendor of the device, its firmware version, etc. Additionally, you can see its status and its connectivity with the mesh network.
Configuration
The Configuration tab shows you, which settings are currently applied for this device and offers the possibility to change them.
The same configuration may be set to any number of devices so that the same settings are applied to all of them. This allows specifying settings just once and reusing them. To manage the configurations in a central place, navigate to > Devices > Configuration.
Actions
The actions tab provides you with an overview of all the actions that were applied on this device. You can see the status of these actions if they are still pending or if they were executed. In case of errors, you will be able to see the error message by hovering over the state icon with your cursor. You can always apply actions to this device.
The actions offered include remotely resetting devices, or making them flash for diagnostic purposes, etc.
Tracking
Devices that are being tracked by our Asset Tracking (such as BlueRange tags) will have a separate tracking view where you can see the current and recent positions of this device. See Asset Tracking for more info.
Statistics
If the device publishes sensor information to our platform, you will be able to see all the historic values for this device in the statistics view. You can toggle between a day’s view, a week, month, ….. or you can use the date selector to select a custom range.
This will give you a fine granular overview for the time period that you are interested in.
Troubleshooting
Checking Device Connections
Users and administrators often ask us why a device did not receive an action or a configuration or why it is not in a desired state. You can try the following steps to troubleshoot the problem. The most frequent reason is that the network infrastructure is prohibiting a connection to the BlueRange server.
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Is the battery low?
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Does the current network infrastructure allow a connection to and from the BlueRange server? Is there a firewall or are important ports closed? Check the BlueRange Network Requirements.
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Is the server running and online?
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Is the device enrolled correctly?
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Did you create an enrollment for the correct platform or did you choose the platform manually and wrong?
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Did you follow the enrollment instructions?
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Does the user, with which you try to login exist? See User settings
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Is this user activated in the User settings?
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Does the user have the according role? Does the user have the right to login?
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Login problems could also appear if you use an ActiveDirectory or other LDAP system. Please carefully read the page about LDAP configurations.
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To quickly check if the device can connect to the BlueRange server, open the BlueRange Portal on your Desktop and navigate to >Devices > Inventory. Afterwards, choose the problematic device and have a look a the compliance status.
Try to send an action to the device. A non critical action is the Refresh Device Info action. Apply this action to the device and navigate to the device details. Go to the device and open the Actions tab to check if the action was performed correctly. It can take up to a couple of minutes until the action is executed completely. You have to refresh this view, to get the latest information about the action status.