Device Types

This page describes Device Types in more detail

Device Types extract, transform and normalize the data sent from the device.

To reduce energy consumption and keep the data packets as small as possible, LPWAN devices send their data via a payload encoded in hexadecimal format. This differs from other protocols that define standard data payload formats and communicate through structured data such as JSON or XML. In the case of HTTP or MQTT, the payload generally does not have a predefined structure. Therefore "passthrough" can be selected when a Data Flow gets created.

More information about payload decoding can be found in this blog.

Device Type Library

Akenza offers a variety of predefined Device Types available on the Device Type Library. The logic is predefined based on device specifications. No additional processing logic will be required. The Device Type Library can be accessed when creating a Data Flow.

Passthrough device types pass along the data to the output connector exactly the same way it was received by the Device Type. This is useful for devices that already send a JSON structure and do not require any additional processing.

If the payload needs to be decoded of a device, which is not available on the Device Type Library, a Custom Device Type (CDT) can be created. This CDT gets available on the organization level.

Last updated