Aruba Central Meridian Beacons Management and Asset Tracking Configuration Guide Follow
Overview
This guide describes the setup and configurations required for supporting Meridian Beacons Management and Asset Tracking on the Aruba Central
Contacting Support
Table 1: Contact Support
| Main Site | meridianapps.com |
| Meridian Support | asp.arubanetworks.com |
| Airheads Social Forum and Knowledge Base | community.arubanetworks.com |
Assumptions
This article assumes that the user has admin rights to configure their infrastructure according to Aruba's deployment guide using Aruba Central and Instant Access Points (IAPs). The user must also have admin access to an active Aruba Meridian Editor account and the required Meridian SKU are enabled for beacons management and/or asset tracking.
Meridian Editor Assets
The following Meridian assets are required to complete the configurations for Central to communicate with Meridian servers for Beacons Management and Asset Tracking.
Access Token
The Access Token is used by Central to securely communicate with Meridian Servers. Initially, is not available and it must be generated in the Beacons Management menu. This needs to only be done one time because the same Access Token can be used for both Beacons Management and Asset Tracking.
If the access token has not been generated yet, follow the steps below to generate a new access token in Editor:
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In your Meridian Editor cloud account, navigate to Beacons > Beacons Management
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Click Generate your access token to get started
After the access token is generated, it will be displayed in the ACCESS TOKEN window. To the right of the window is a copy button that can be used to copy the value onto your clipboard for copy and paste operations.
Meridian Server URL
Aruba Meridian has a Standard Server for the general users and an EU Server specifically for the European Union. When configuring the Meridian configuration profiles, it is critical that you use the correct server URL. To find out which server URL to use, look at the webpage URL that you use for accessing your Meridian Editor account.
For example:
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If you access your Editor account by using https://edit.meridianapps.com, then you are using the Standard Server
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If you access your Editor account by using https://edit-eu.meridianapps.com, then you are using the EU Server.
It is important that you know which instance of Meridian Server your Meridian Editor account is set up in so that you can enter the correct Meridian Server URL when configuring or tyour devices to communicate with Meridian servers.
Beacons Management Server URL
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Standard Server: https://edit.meridianapps.com/api/beacons/manage
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EU Server: https://edit-eu.meridianapps.com/api/beacons/manage
Asset Tracking Server URL
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Standard Server: https://tags.meridianapps.com/api/v1beta1/streams/ingestion.start
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EU Server: https://tags-eu.meridianapps.com/api/v1beta1/streams/ingestion.start
Location ID
The Location ID is required when configuring your IoT profile. It can be found in the Meridian Editor settings page or in the URL of your account.
Or you can get it from the webpage URL after you log into your Edit account. The syntax for the Meridian Editor URL will look like this:
https://edit.meridianapps.com/apps/<Location ID>
Aruba Central Configurations
Support for enabling the APB and configuring the IoT profiles for Beacons Management and Asset Tracking has been evolving in Central so please pay close attention to the firmware you are using as it will affect the way in which you configure your infrastructure to work with Meridian.
Enabling the Internal Access Point Beacons
Before you start, the AP Beacons (APB) must be enabled so that it can be provisioned for use with Meridian. If the APB is not enabled, the APB will not be broadcasting the beacon ID and Meridian tools will not be able to configure the beacon for use.
To enable the internal BLE radio in Aruba Central UI, do the following:
Step 1:
Navigate to the Group where you want to have the BLE configurations enabled, then click on Devices. Click on the Configure icon on top right hand corner of the page, then click on Show Advanced.
Step 2:
Navigate to IoT tab, scroll down the page to see IoT Radio Profiles. Click + to add a new profile.
Enter the profile name, set Radio Mode to BLE, Radio will be Internal, BLE operation mode should be set to Both (Beaconing & Scanning). Leave all other parameters as is. Save the profile.
Step 3:
By default the profile is disabled. Enable the profile by clicking the WiFi button on the right side.
Add Required Certificates for Beacon Management
Before we configure the IoT Transport profile for Beacons Management, the following certificates needs to be uploaded to Aruba Central for Beacons Management.
- Root CA: GTS Root R1
- Subordinate CA: GTS CA 1D4
These certificates are available from https://pki.goog/repository/. Find the proper certificates, download the Certificate (PEM) format and add it to your Certificates library in Aruba Central.
Go to >>Organization >> Certificates >> + to add your certificates. All certificate types are CA.
After the certificates are uploaded, they must be specified for usage in Aruba Central when IoT profile authenticates with Meridian Server.
Go to >> Group >> Config >> Security tab >> Certificate Usage >> IoT CA Cert and select the certificates and save the setting.
Configuring IoT Transport Profile for Beacons Management
Step 1:
Navigate to the Group where you want to have the BLE configurations enabled, then click on Devices. Click on the Configure icon on top right hand corner of the page, then click on Show Advanced.
Navigate to IoT tab, scroll down the page to see IoT Transport Streams. Click + to add a new profile.
Enter the profile name, set the required Server URL, (URLs given at the beginning of this guide).
Set Server type to Meridian Beacon Management. Device Class is Aruba Beacons. Reporting interval can be set to 60 seconds.
If you are using Proxy Server, enter the details else ignore. Under Authentication enter the Access Token (taken from Meridian Editor). Save the Settings.
Step 3:
By default the profile is disabled. Enable the profile by clicking the WiFi button on the right side.
Step 4:
Wait 15-30 minutes to establish the connection to Meridian Beacon management server. The Beacon Management connection status in Editor will update when a connection is made.
Add Required Certificates for Asset Tracking
Before we configure the IoT Transport profile for Asset Tracking, the following certificate needs to be uploaded to Aruba Central for Asset Tracking.
Meridian Asset Tracking requires DigiCert Global Root CA which can be downloaded from https://www.digicert.com/kb/digicert-root-certificates.htm
Go to >>Organization >> Certificates >> + to add your certificate. Certificate type is CA.
After the certificate is uploaded, it must be specified for usage in Aruba Central when IoT profile authenticates with Meridian Server.
Go to >> Group >> Config >> Security tab >> Certificate Usage >> IoT CA Cert and select the certificate and save the setting.
Configure IoT Transport Profile for Asset Tracking
Configuring the IoT Transport Profile for Beacons Management is required prior to configuring the IoT Transport Profile for Asset Tracking. If you haven’t done it yet, please complete the section on Configuring Beacons Management IoT Profile before starting with this section.
Step 1:
Navigate to the Group where you want to have the BLE configurations enabled, then click on Devices. Click on the Configure icon on top right hand corner of the page, then click on Show Advanced.
Step 2:
Navigate to IoT tab, scroll down the page to see IoT Transport Streams. Click + to add a new profile.
Enter the profile name, set the required Server URL, (URLs given at the beginning of this guide).
Set Server type to Meridian Asset Management. Device Class is Aruba Tags. Reporting interval will be set to 5 seconds.
If you are using Proxy Server, enter the details else ignore. Under Authentication enter the Access Token (taken from Meridian Editor). Client ID is the Location ID taken from Meridian Editor.
Save the Settings.
Step 3:
By default the profile is disabled. Enable the profile by clicking the WiFi button on the right side.
Step 4.
Add a tag to be tracked using the Aruba Tags mobile app. Wait about 15-30 minutes for the tag to be reported to Meridian server, then check the tag status in Editor.
Summary
This configuration guide provides the fundamental components necessary to configure the infrastructure to enable the APB and communicate with Meridian Servers for Beacons Management and Asset Tracking. If the system does not work as expected after completing all the steps described above, you may contact https://asp.arubanetworks.com/
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