FLIR GW65 Vibration Sensors

The flir-south-gw65 plugin provides a mechanism to connect the FLIR vibration sensors, via the GW65 gateway to FLIR Bridge. The plugin allows the GW65 to be used to connect sets of the SV87 vibration sensors. Raw vibration data is then collected from the sensors and may be process by one or more of the filters that offer vibration analysis.

The connection between the sensors and the plugin, via the GW65 gateway as established using the FLIR mobile application, before starting this process however you must install and configure the flir-south-gw65 plugin. The plugin may be installed either by the user interface or by using the package manager of your Linux system to install it manually from a package.

You must also have an MQTT broker configured and running on your network. This should be configured to allow MQTTS and also have a username and password for the FLIR gateway to use.

Creating the GW65 South Service

Using the normal procedure for creating a new south service in FLIR Bridge,

  • Select the South item from the menu on the left hand side of the screen

  • Click on the Add + link on the top left of the South service screen

  • In the list of available plugins choose the gw65 entry, if it is not in the list click on the available plugins link and install it.

  • Enter a name for your service and click on Next

  • The configuration page will appear

    gw65_1

    • Asset Name: The asset name to use as a fallback asset. This is normally unused.

    • MQTT Broker: The address of the MQTT broker that will be used to communicate with the GW65 gateway.

  • Enter the address of your MQTT broker, this must be the public address of the machine and not be localhost or the address 127.0.0.1 even when running your MQTT broker on the same machine as the FLIR Bridge. The information will be passed on to the GW65 gateway and must be an address to which the GW65 can route.

  • Click on Next

  • Enable the service and click on Done

You may now proceed to configure the GW65 using the FLIR mobile application. It is important than the south service within FLIR Bridge is running before this process is started.

  • Open the FLIR application and select the LOCAL SERVER option.

    app_1

  • Click on the Add Server link

    app_2

    • Server IP: This is the IP address of your MQTT server. This should be the same as was entered into the south service that was created in FLIR Bridge.

    • User name: The user name you configured in your MQTT server. The default value is flir.

    • Password: The password assigned to the above user. The default is 12345678.

    • Port: Leave this as the default value 8883

  • Click on Continue

  • If the application responds with the error “Invalid IP Address” this could mean one of many things

    • The IP address you entered was incorrect

    • Your phone is not on the same network as FLIR Bridge

    • The username and password entered were incorrect

    • The south service for the GW65 is not running on the FLIR Bridge

    app_3

  • Click on the name of the discovered gateway and follow the steps to setup a connection to the WiFi network

  • You will see the details of your GW65 gateway

    app_4

  • Click on Continue and follow the instructions to add your sensors

Installing an MQTT Broker

You may use any compatible MQTT broker with the plugin and FLIR GW65 gateway, during testing the Mosquitto MQTT broker was used, a package exists that allows this to be installed and configured for use with gateway, this package is called flir-mqtt-broker.

To use the package simply use your package manager to install the package, for example on a apt based system such as Ubuntu

apt install flir-mqtt-broker

This will

  • Install the mosquitto MQTT service

  • Configure it with a certificate

  • Add a user with the username flir and the password 12345678

  • Start it listening on port 8883 for MQTTS

Alternatively you can manually configure the Mosquitto MQTT browser by using the following steps

  • Edit the configuration file /etc/mosquitto/mosquitto.conf and adding the following lines

    # Start of MQTTS support
listener 8883
cafile /etc/mosquitto/certs/ca.crt
certfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/client.crt
keyfile /etc/mosquitto/certs/client.key

password_file /etc/mosquitto/passwordfile
# End of MQTTS support

  • Create a password file by running the command

    touch /etc/mosquitto/passwordfile

  • Create the flir user, the password shown here is 12345678 but any password can be used but must be set in the GW65 configuration application.

    mosquitto_passwd -b /etc/mosquitto/passwordfile flir 12345678

  • Generate the required certificates

    mkdir /etc/mosquitto/certs
cd /etc/mosquitto/certs
openssl req -new -x509 -days 365 -extensions v3_ca -keyout ca.key -out ca.crt -subj "/C=RO/ST=Home/L=Home/O=Dianomic/OU=FLIR Bridge/CN=dianomic.com" -passout pass:flir
openssl genrsa -out client.key 2048
openssl req -new -out client.csr -key client.key -subj "/C=RO/ST=H/L=Home/O=MQTT Broker/OU=MQTT Broker/CN=mqtt-broker.local"
openssl x509 -req -in client.csr -CA ca.crt -CAkey ca.key -CAcreateserial -out client.crt -days 365 pass:flir
openssl rsa -in client.key -out client.key

  • Set permissions for Mosquitto MQTT

    chown -R mosquitto:/etc/mosquitto
chmod 700 /etc/mosquitto/certs

  • Then restart your MQTT broker

    systemctl restart mosquitto