Hermetry Edge is software, not hardware. It runs on licensed gateways and routers on your site, reads your field devices and sends their data to Hermetry over one encrypted connection. The gateways and routers are bought separately from the list of licensed devices on the Hermetry website. Edge is priced on its own, separately from the hardware.
You do not need Edge to send data: any device that speaks MQTT, HTTP or LoRaWAN can connect to Hermetry directly. Edge is for sites where many field devices should travel over one managed connection.
What Edge does
| Capability | What you get |
|---|---|
| Field protocols on site | Edge reads serial and network field devices, such as Modbus RTU over RS485 and Modbus TCP. Which protocols are available depends on the gateway or router model. |
| Devices behind the gateway | Each field device appears in Hermetry as its own child device, with readings, alarms and dashboards. See Devices behind a gateway. |
| One outbound connection | The gateway dials out over TLS with its own device certificate. Nothing on site needs to accept connections from the internet. |
| One-step claiming | The gateway leaves the factory with an identity Hermetry knows. You claim it into your organisation; nobody types credentials on site. See Adding and claiming devices. |
| Remote settings and firmware | Settings are changed from Hermetry and checked against the model’s own description; signed firmware rolls out in waves. See Remote device settings and Firmware updates (OTA). |
| Web panel from anywhere | Open the router’s own web panel from its device page, without a fixed IP. See Remote access to a router’s panel. |
LoRaWAN works alongside Edge: a licensed router with a LoRa radio can be a gateway for Hermetry’s own LoRaWAN network server. See Licensed routers as LoRaWAN gateways.
Getting a site running
- Install. Mount the licensed gateway or router on site and wire or pair your field devices to it.
- Claim. Open the claim window on the device’s local Cloud page and claim it in Hermetry under Devices > New device.
- Choose the field devices. On the gateway, set up the field devices it reads and which of them it reports to the cloud. Their names become the child device names in Hermetry.
- Map. Children get a profile by the type the gateway reports, or the gateway profile’s Profile of new children. Create profiles named like the types your gateway reports, so each kind of field device gets its own keys, alarms and dashboards.
- Run. Watch readings on dashboards, set alarms, and update the gateway remotely when needed.
Buffering during outages
Licensed gateways can keep data locally while their link is down and send it when the link is back. How much they keep depends on the model and its configuration; ask Hermetry about a specific model before you rely on it.
What happens when the buffer is sent:
- Each record carries the time it was read (
ts), so the readings land at the right place in history. See Timestamps, late and duplicate readings. - A telemetry message whose every record is older than a minute counts as a replay. Replays must also fit the profile’s Replay messages per second (empty: half the per-second telemetry count), inside the normal telemetry limit. A big backlog therefore drains over time rather than at once.
- Alarm rules evaluate late readings by their own rules; see Clear conditions and late readings.
- For LoRaWAN, a licensed router keeps the frames it hears and forwards them later; they are processed but never answered. See Local mode and relays.
Security
- Data goes over TLS; the gateway authenticates with an X.509 certificate from the platform’s device certificate authority. See Device certificates.
- Revoking the certificate ends the gateway’s live session at once.
- Commands never travel over an unencrypted session.
- Remote panel sessions are time-limited and every session is audited.
In development
| Feature | Status |
|---|---|
| Commands and shared-attribute changes to devices behind a gateway | In development. See Commands to devices behind a gateway. |
| SNMP polling done by Edge on site, for equipment that should not be reached from outside (including traps) | In development. Today Hermetry polls SNMP from the cloud, at a public address; see Polling devices over SNMP. |
| OPC UA and BACnet in Edge | In development |
| eSIM profile management on licensed routers | In development. See Cellular connections and eSIM. |
| Local LoRaWAN network server on the router, LoRaWAN relays | In development. See Local mode and relays. |
Pulse counting on digital inputs depends on the gateway model; check the model’s specification.
Your own gateway instead
If you build your own gateway software (on an edge computer, for example), implement the v1/gw/* topics described in Devices behind a gateway. You get child devices the same way; claiming, remote settings and the remote panel are features of licensed devices.