Search code examples
thingsboard

Telemetry does not show up in Thingsboard device dialog ("Hello world" tutorial)

I installed ThingsBoard CE on premises. I followed

https://thingsboard.io/docs/user-guide/install/ubuntu/

step by step. Installation base is a fresh Ubuntu 22.04 Server install on a virtual host with no other duties. It's an IPv6-only installation with 127.0.0.1 being the only IPv4 address reachable direcly, other IPv4 targets by NAT64/DNS64. From what I see (e.g. by systemctl), all services (Postgresql, Zookeeper, Kafka, Thingsboard) boot up correctly. I installed Thingsboard with the --loadDemo option in step 6 of the instructions. I can log in using the preinstalled accounts. I've changed the passwords. After having checked that things work connecting to localhost:8080, I've installed Apache-based reverse proxies for IPv6 and IPv4 connectivity. This all works.

Next, I continued with the "Hello world" tutorial in

https://thingsboard.io/docs/getting-started-guides/helloworld/

I fire the mocked telemetry transmission using curl:

root@thingsboard:~# curl -v -X POST -d '{"temperature": "24"}' http://localhost:8080/api/v1/xxx/telemetry --header "Content-Type:application/json"

On HTTP level, this seems to work:

*   Trying 127.0.0.1:8080...
* Connected to localhost (127.0.0.1) port 8080 (#0)
> POST /api/v1/xxx/telemetry HTTP/1.1
> Host: localhost:8080
> User-Agent: curl/7.81.0
> Accept: */*
> Content-Type:application/json
> Content-Length: 21
> 
* Mark bundle as not supporting multiuse
< HTTP/1.1 200 
< Vary: Origin
< Vary: Access-Control-Request-Method
< Vary: Access-Control-Request-Headers
< X-Content-Type-Options: nosniff
< X-XSS-Protection: 1; mode=block
< Cache-Control: no-cache, no-store, max-age=0, must-revalidate
< Pragma: no-cache
< Expires: 0
< Content-Length: 0
< Date: Wed, 26 Oct 2022 04:33:32 GMT
< 
* Connection #0 to host localhost left intact

I do not see, however, the telemetry data in the "Latest telemetry" tab of "My new device" in the tenant's "Devices" dialog. I tried

  • Sending the data remotely via the reverse proxy or directly to localhost:8080
  • Sending via IPv6 or IPv4
  • Replacing the Kafka queuing with in-memory queuing by disabling the Kafka-config lines in thingsboard.conf.

Nothing changed the behaviour a bit. However, making it syntactically incorrect JSON or using a wrong crendential lead to different error result codes so Thingsboard is actually processing the message.

I cannot see anything in the tenant's "Api usage" dialog either as there are only spinning wheels in subframes.

And that's where I am stuck at the moment. I don't have an idea where to look for the problem as I don't even know where I possibly could look.

Can anyone help me?

Best regards, Dirk

Solution

  • As often, the problem was at a completely unexpected location: It turned out that ThingsBoard actually processed the events perfectly but my reverse proxy was misconfigured. This was also the reason for

    I cannot see anything in the tenant's "Api usage" dialog either as there are only spinning wheels in subframes.

    I use Apache as reverse proxy. It needs the proxy, proxy_html and proxy_wstunnel modules enabled and the following configuration (assuming it runs on the same machine as ThingsBoard):

    # close off proxying while allowing reverseproxy
ProxyRequests Off
# pass header information through to the proxied host
ProxyPreserveHost On

# mod_proxy_wstunnel for the data websockets
ProxyPass /api/ws/ ws://localhost:8080/api/ws/

# "normal" http reverse proxy
ProxyPass /        http://localhost:8080/
ProxyPassReverse / http://localhost:8080/

    Now I see the telemetry, I have the dashboards and I can finally continue following the tutorials.

    May I suggest the the on-premises installation instructions at least mention this configuration need? It's a trivial pitfall but it can be really frustrating if you forget it and get no hint that there is a problem.