Welcome to the FLOTO demo! This guide is meant for researchers interested in deploying their research applications to collect data on FLOTO infrastructure. It covers the essential steps to install a device, access the FLOTO portal, and start deploying applications on your managed devices. For more detailed instructions, see our Getting Started guide on our documentation GitHub.

Setting Up Your Device

1. Obtain a FLOTO kit containing a power adapter, an Ethernet cable, and a Raspberry Pi. If you have previously spoken with a FLOTO team member about receiving devices, you can skip this step. If you are requesting devices for the first time, please submit a device request form on our website.
2. When you receive the device kit, connect the Raspberry Pi to a router/modem using the Ethernet cable and power with the adapter.
3. Look for the red light on the Raspberry Pi and the blinking lights next to the Ethernet port to confirm it’s connected.

NOTE: Once plugged in, devices do not install any software. The device will NOT run any applications until you deploy your own through the portal or explicitly grant device access to other FLOTO users who deploy applications.

Gaining Portal Access

First, you will need to create a portal account and request a project.

1. Visit the FLOTO portal and sign in with Globus Auth.
2. Request a new project by emailing contact@floto.science using the email you used to set up your FLOTO login. Please include a short description (1 to 2 paragraphs) of your project. You can mention in the email if you are only interested in deploying the demo application.
3. After the FLOTO team creates a project for your account, ensure your project is active in the portal for device and application access. You can confirm that active status by checking to see if your project name appears at the top of the portal website.

Deploying Applications

NOTE: If you are deploying a new application, please refer to our documentation to learn how to add it to FLOTO. If you don’t have one, use our demo application (“FLOTO Getting Started” in the portal). Our demo application is a simplified version of the Netrics application, which runs standard command-line network measurement tools like ping, dig, and traceroute and other third-party speed-testing applications (M-Lab’s NDT7 and Ookla’s SpeedTest CLI).

1. To deploy an application on a device, navigate to the jobs page on the portal to create a new job.
2. Select and configure the application, set its runtime duration, and assign it to your device.
3. Click Submit the job to start the application on your device.

Viewing Collected Data (Demo Application Only)

1. Access the device’s local dashboard by looking up the device’s local network IP and going to the address http://w.x.y.z:30001 in your web browser, where w.x.y.z is replaced by the IP address for your device. You can find the device’s IP address on the device page in the portal.
2. Explore the data collected by the demo application displayed on the web page.

(Optional): Uploading Collected Data

NOTE: See documentation for a more thorough explanation of how to add a data collector app to upload data from the device.

1. Configure rclone for cloud storage access.
2. Set up the data uploader service in a new job to transfer data to your cloud storage.

Next Steps

Explore further by managing devices, deploying more applications, and utilizing the FLOTO API for advanced operations. Visit our documentation for detailed guides on device management and application deployment.