How to stream IoT & telematics data to Wialon?

Sending telemetry data from flespi to the Wialon fleet management platform.

Wialon is a multifunctional fleet management system also used for mobile and stationary assets tracking. Both flespi and Wialon are developed by the Gurtam company. There are several use cases where flespi together with Wialon can be used together. Though, there are native ways to exchange data between these two platforms. To send data from Wialon to flespi you need to create a retranslator (of the Wialon Retranslator type) on the Wialon side and point it to the domain name:port of your flespi channel operated over Wialon Retranslator protocol

Following is the guide on how to send data from flespi to Wialon. We assume that you already have the data coming to the flespi Telematics Hub.

1. Create a unit in Wialon

  • New Unit device type must be "Device model (flespi)”

  • Server address field will show where to point your flespi stream

  • Unique ID must be the same as the ident field in flespi

create unit in wialon flespi gateway

2. Create a device in flespi

  • Make sure you have a proper channel in your flespi account (Telematics hub -> Channels) that corresponds the device protocol

  • Navigate to Telematics hub -> Devices -> "+" to add a new device

  • Pick the device type of your GPS tracker from the dropdown and specify your GPS tracker's IMEI in the ident field.

create flespi device for wialon stream

3. Configure a stream in flespi

  • When in the flespi panel, navigate to Telematics hub -> Streams -> "+" to add a new stream

  • Protocol_id — wialon_flespi_gateway

  • If you use Wialon Hosting, the Host and Port values will be populated automatically once you pick the proper datacenter in the configuration dropdown. If you use Wialon Local, you should type in the dedicated Host and Port values manually.

flespi stream to wialon config

4. Subscribe the stream to the device

  • Once the stream is created, click on it to open settings.
  • Navigate to the Devices tab.
  • Click the green '+' button to pick the device to forward the data from.

subscribe stream to a channel

5. Check message delivery

If you see the “stream has sent messages” log records in the stream Logs & Messages tab, it means flespi started forwarding the data via the stream:

flespi stream log

And you should now see your messages in the Wialon system:

wialon unit on map

6. Send commands from Wialon

To enable device management (sending commands) for flespi devices from the Wialon side, you need to specify the valid flespi token in the CMS Manager: https://help.wialon.com/help/wialon-hosting/en/how-tos/commands/how-to-send-commands-from-wialon-to-flespi-devices.

7. Additional features

flespi and Wialon are made in the same company so their integration level is high. Wialon fully supports media data passing through flespi - images are automatically uploaded directly to the Wialon while video files are available by the link and can be played in the Wialon UI directly from the device media.

8. Troubleshooting

For correct device to device match you have to subscribe stream not to a channel but to individual devices. You can automate this assignment using groups. If stream is subscribed to the channel only you will be limited on Wialon with flespi gateway unit type and in Wialon there will be no possibility to send commands to the device via flespi.

Whenever you will have any problem with integration please contact any of support teams - both Wialon and flespi can communicate with each other directly to resolve common problems. However the most popular mistake is either configuring flespi stream to the incorrect Wialon server address or picking incorrect device type or unique ID in Wialon unit configuration.

Same as with other stream types for enhanced diagnostics you can right click on a log line and check related raw traffic generated by the stream towards Wialon server.

Change log

To stay in sync with all improvements and changes to the Wialon stream, subscribe to the change log on the forum.


See also
Apply webhooks to events from calculators to invoke your lambda upon an aggregated event happened to the device
A dedicated plugin enables the visualization of your flespi items parameters in Grafana.