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Blecon Hub

A hub is a dedicated hardware unit mounted at a permanent location in your facility. It provides consistent Bluetooth scanning coverage of the area around it.

A hub is one kind of hotspot. "Hotspot" is the general word for anything that relays a tag signal to the cloud: a hub, a mobile device running the Blecon Agent, or a third-party access point. "Hub" means the fixed hardware.

Setting up hubs

  1. Mount the hub at your chosen location. Ceiling mounting gives the most even coverage.
  2. Power on: Connect to power (PoE or AC adapter, depending on model).
  3. Connect: The hub connects to the Blecon cloud automatically via Ethernet, WiFi, or cellular.
  4. Register: In the dashboard, select Hubs under Network in the sidebar, then choose Add Hub. Enter the Hub ID and, optionally, a Name. To place the hub as you add it, choose Choose zone and the zone the hub is in: it is placed at the zone's centre, on the zone's floor. To register hubs from your own code, use the Tracker API.
  5. Place it exactly: Open the hub from the list and drag it to its exact place, as described in Configuring location.

Hub management requires the Enterprise tier. On other plans the Hubs page shows the upgrade notice instead of the list.

Configuring location

Open a hub from the Hubs list. Its detail page has these ways to fix where the hub is:

  • Move to zone: In the Position card, choose Move to zone, then choose the zone the hub is in and Move here. The hub moves to the centre of the zone and takes the zone's floor, the same way an anchor is placed. The top of the page shows the zone the hub is in.
  • Map position: Drag the marker to the hub's exact place, or click the map to place it, and choose Save position. Clear position removes it. A hub with no position uses its own reported location and shows as Not placed in the list.
  • Local coordinates (x/y/z in metres): Set these through the Tracker API for a site surveyed in a local grid. The cloud converts them to latitude and longitude against a datum: the map position of local (0, 0) and the grid's rotation. Set the datums and each hub's site through the Tracker API, as an account default or one datum per site.

A position you set takes priority over the hub's self-reported location. When the two are more than 100 metres apart, the detail page shows the distance between them.

Placement guidelines

  • Space hubs 10–15 metres apart for 2–5 metre positioning accuracy.
  • Mount at consistent heights for reliable signal measurement.
  • Avoid placing directly behind large metal objects or water sources.
  • Document hub locations for future maintenance.

For detailed placement guidance, see Plan hub placement for a warehouse.

Monitoring

Select Hubs under Network in the sidebar to see the status of every registered hub. The page is laid out like the Anchors page: the filter bar, a map of the placed hubs as pins in the colour of their status, the cards, then the table.

The filter bar is the one every list page shares, showing Hubs. Its search finds a hub by name or ID, and a zone shows the hubs placed inside that zone, on its floor. A hub has no team, type, keyword or custom field, so those fields do not apply here.

The cards count your hubs by state. Click a card to filter the table to those hubs:

  • Placed: The hub has a fixed position.
  • Not placed: The hub has no position set, and uses the location it reports. See Configuring location.
  • Online: The hub has reported in the last 15 minutes.
  • Offline: Nothing has been heard from the hub for 15 minutes. It is not providing coverage.
  • Pending: The hub is registered, but the cloud has not yet heard from it. This card appears only while a hub is pending.

The table shows each hub's Status, its Last Data (when the hub last reported), its Position (placed or not), the Zone it is in with the zones above it, its Floor, and its Source (added manually, or synced from Juniper Mist). A hub's cellular signal shows on its own page. The list does not refresh by itself. Choose Refresh to update it.

Any traffic from the hub counts as a report: tag sightings, location updates and the hub's own status report. A new hub shows Online about a minute after it connects, so you can confirm an installation from the dashboard as soon as the hub's LED is solid.

Click a hub to open its detail page. The header shows its status, Last data and when it was Registered. The Hardware card shows what the hub reports about itself, such as its model, software versions and cellular signal.

Questions? Contact Blecon support — we're happy to help.