Understanding device data flow in TagoIO [Tip #10 Carolina from Support]

General Support Tips
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Hi y’all, Carolina from support here one more time :grinning_face:

Today’s post is a tip that answers one of the most common questions I get here in support.

I decided to put it together in the hope of helping more of our users who might have the same questions.

But first, I need to clarify a common misconception I see a lot!

Let’s start with that, and then we’ll walk through the data flow step by step:

Connector vs Device:

  • A Connector defines what your device type is… its payload parser. You create it once and reuse it for all devices of the same model. E.g.: Dragino LHT65N, Milesight UC500, etc..

  • A Device is the actual endpoint in TagoIO. Each physical sensor or gateway should be its own device, with its own token, storage, and live inspector.

So, you do not need a separate connector per device. You need one device per physical unit, and typically only one connector per device type.

Now, let’s go to the dataflow of your data here in TagoIO:

Device → Network → Connector → Device Payload Parser → Device Storage → Dashboards/Actions/Analysis

  1. Device - Your hardware sends data via HTTP/MQTT directly, or through an integrated external network server (like a LoRaWAN server) via a Network.

  2. Network - A Network represents the communication channel (e.g., HTTP, MQTT, TTN, Chirpstack) and is in charge of parsing any network related data.

  3. Connector - A Connector is attached to a Network and handles the decoding for a specific device. The Connector-level parser transforms the raw payload (usually hex) into TagoIO’s standard JSON format: variables, values, timestamps, units, etc.

  4. Device Payload Parser - This is an optional additional parser that works on a per device basis, it’s useful for when you want to do specific tweaks to data being parsed, before it’s stored on the device.

  5. Device Storage - The parsed data is stored in the device’s data storage, ready to query, filter, and export. You can validate the incoming records from the device Data tab or via the Live Inspector.

  6. Dashboards / Actions / Analysis - Use the clean, standardized variables directly in Dashboards for real-time and historical visualization, and in Actions to trigger automations on data insert or schedules. Analyses can further process these variables, enrich with external APIs, and write results back to devices.

Hope this gives you a clearer picture of the data flow at TagoIO!

Wishing you all a very nice Christmas :heart_hands:

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