by Erin RobotGrrl | Nov 19, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
The device simulator is now generating values and sending through MQTT. The values get displayed and updated live on the AR marker overlay without glitching. A few days ago making elements clickable was figured out. This will be useful when there’s a need for buttons on the AR view. The topic structure was updated as well. The next step will be to make the device send and receive the data. The AR program is not set up for multiple devices or markers just yet. That will be future work as well.
by Erin RobotGrrl | Nov 16, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
Added the AR overlay to the marker and added the javascript functions to change the text values on the overlay. Updated the system architecture diagram for the latest changes. The next step will be to have the data updated live by the MQTT data. Also, the MQTT connection needs to be fixed again, ha. A few days ago, functionality was added that sends when the marker is in view.
by Erin RobotGrrl | Nov 9, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
AR markers triggering messages to send to the alternate (secure) MQTT server is working. The preliminary topic structure was chosen, which gives each marker type its own topic, and sends the state when it enters the view, still in the view, and exits the view. Next step is to make sure the device can receive these messages, and have the device send its sensor data – only when the marker is in view (as to not overload this MQTT server (since it isn’t running on our AWS)). As well, next step is sending a marker state heartbeat when it is in view.
by Erin RobotGrrl | Nov 3, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
It’s been a jam-packed set of work sessions today to try to track down and figure out how to make this work. Following yesterday’s trial and errors, the first thing to fix was making a new config for mosquitto. Then, regenerating the certificates, but this time with the proper information. The firewalls were updated to allow the communication through the ports. Still receive errors, check the firewalls, check the version of ssl. The cause was a FIFO DLT bug with mosquitto. Getting the very latest version of mosquitto via the ppa feed solved that.
Now that mosquitto could run for longer, the next error was it was unable to open one of the ports. Added two useful parameters to the config to enable better logging. The error now shows the cause – the certificate was too weak. Needed to use sha256 instead of md5. Alright, so redo the certificates with that, and all ports are now working.
Through a browser, it still can’t establish a connection to the server. Likely because the certificate is self-signed. Figured out how to add the certificates and approve them, but it didn’t end up working anyway. No problem, can try certbot with let’s encrypt to get a validated certificate. However, they do not issue certificates for the way our setup currently is.
Hit a dead-end for this for now, so the next thing to do was to re-plan how this can work. Drew another system architecture and have an idea on how to make it happen. Next steps will be to start coding it.
by Erin RobotGrrl | Nov 2, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
A bit of running in a circle to get tls/ssl to work. It didn’t work at first. Some of the issue was around the common name, and the lack of clarity about what that actually needs to be. Ran in to issues with the mosquitto config file not being updated, and trying to start / stop mosquitto. This resulted in needing to reboot the ec2 instance often during the trial and error. Eventually was able to get back to a working state. The next steps will be to regenerate the certificates in the proper format, make sure the ports are open, and whatever else will be needed to get this working.
by Erin RobotGrrl | Oct 30, 2020 | News, Tech Logs
Since the AR view uses the camera, this means the connection has to be secure using ssl. MQTT was added to the AR code, but it can’t communicate over websockets – it has to be secure websockets. The next step will be to generate certificates for the ssl connection.
