Good Morning Beau,
I just wanted to chime in on what Mike had already said to provide an
example of how NOS/CO-OPS (https://tidesandcurrents.noaa.gov/) is
using OpenDCS for Iridium retrieval and decoding. We have approximately 40
tides and currents monitoring stations transmitting Iridium data, via 9602
SBD Modems, to 4 different systems. Three of those systems are LRGS. All of
our Iridium modems are provisioned on the DOD network. Each modem can have
up to 5 designated servers, LRGS, or Email locations in which the data is
automatically sent after it passes through the Hawaii Gateway. We use the
OpenDCS software to grab the data from our different LRGS systems and have
a DECODE configuration we developed to process our NOS pseudobinary data
package into a more readable format. As Mike mentioned, we have had to jump
through some hoops with regards to firewall rules and whether the data is
pushed or pulled but Email may allow for you to work around those
headaches. Another option we have used in the past, is having our
on-network LRGS pull data from an off-network LRGS (this allows us to work
around the firewall restrictions at least for now).
I could definitely provide the DECODE configuration we use for our systems
but it wouldn't be terribly helpful unless you wanted to encode your data
in our NOS-Pseudobinary format. Otherwise you will need to develop a new
configuration based on how your data is formatted to transmit. I have only
used OpenDCS for Iridium data on the DOD network but I don't believe the
header differs too much, if at all, on the civilian network. Hopefully that
helps get you pointed in the right direction but, please feel free to reach
out if you have any other questions.
Thanks,
Nathan
On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 4:28 PM Michael Neilson <m.allan.neilson@xxxxxxxxx>
wrote:
Hello Beau,
The IridiumSDB source in LRGS listens for a connection from the gateway
(specifically the gateway initiates the connection to the LRGS, not the
other way around). So the data will come from whichever gateway handles the
particular device you're getting data from. Looking through the Iridium
documentation it looks like the IPaddress/hostname of the receiving system
(your LRGS in this case) is set when the remote device is provisioned or by
the owner of the device. If you didn't provision through the DoD, data
would likely go through the Hawaii gateway.
As for formats, someone more knowledgeable about iridium itself will need
to provide guidance but the Iridium data source in LRGS will handle the
baseline date that all devices may send (the IMEI, lat/long, etc). All LRGS
would do is save the raw message provided by the device, you would need to
create a DECODES script to handle whatever the actual format is. If there
are already industry standards though hopefully someone will be kind enough
to share a DECODES script if they have one.
If you aren't the provisioner of the device though, or the provisioner
won't set your IP as a destination, you'd have to coordinate with them how
to get data into your LRGS.
I did see an option in the Iridium docs about having the gateways send the
data through email, which would help with organizational firewall rules;
however, we don't currently support email as an LRGS data source.
Mike Neilson
On Thu, Aug 25, 2022 at 11:49 AM Uriona Beau - FPAC-NRCS Salt Lake City UT
<dmarc-noreply@xxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Hoping someone might be willing to reach out and give me some advice
setting up an iridium based LRGS for openDCS. The documentation is pretty
sparse and we are having some trouble getting things off the ground. In
particular I'm trying to discern if the Iridium LRGS pulls from the DoD
(Hawaii) or civilian (Arizona) gateway, furthermore - does the LRGS require
a specific format (DoD -PECOS vs industry proprietary formats)? And lastly,
can DECODES be utilized to decode the messages and does anyone have any
experience setting up the configurations for this whichever format is being
utilized.
Thanks in advance for any advice or hints anyone is willing to pass along,
*Beau Uriona, PE*
*Hydrologist*
*National Water and Climate Center*
*FPAC-NRCS*
*(385)266-4443*
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