Batch-Provision Multiple, Similar Devices using Scripts

After you have set up a Python interpreter so that you can begin to automate many administrative tasks, and can now fetch tokens automatically, you may now want to automate time-consuming tasks like batch-provisioning many new end-devices at once. This tutorial shows how to do this, as well as query devices, and deprovision devices as well.

Overview of this Tutorial

We will be building a script that:

• imports end-device information from a file specified by the user;
• generates/retrieves a subscriber’s authentication token;
• iterates over the input list of end-devices, checking to see if the device has already been provisioned, and then performs ONE of:
  1. provisions the new device if not already provisioned and the script was called in (default) provisioning-mode;
  2. skips that device if it has already been provisioned, and the script was called in provisioning-mode;
  3. skips that device if it has not been provisioned, and the script was called in remove-devices-mode; OR
  4. removes that device from the subscriber account, if the script was called in remove-devices-mode.

A typical command may look like:

$ python3 provision.py --csv new-devices.csv --subscriber ficticious@subscriber.ac.nz

Password:

Adding 999 new devices...
Success

and will extend the script that was built during the token generation tutorial.

Importing End-Device Provisioning Information

Provisioning a new end-device requires information like:

• DevEUI;
• AppEUI;

CSV File for End-Device Parameters

This tutorial uses the standard Python CSV library to parse and import end-device information using the Comma-Separated Values (CSV) format. More information can be found at:

• Python 2 CSV library
• Python 3 CSV library
• PEP 305 – CSV File API

Some disadvantages of CSV are that it is very senstive to changes in the format of the information, and there are many non-standard variants of the format in use.

JSON Files for End-Device Information

Previous Steps

• Setting up a Scripting Environment – Set up a suitable Python interpreter, along with some standard tools and libraries
• Fetching Tokens Automatically – Build a DX API base-class so that tokens are fetched automatically when performing other scripted tasks

Next Steps

• Sending Downlinks to Multiple Devices – Queue up downlinks for multiple devices using a script