Server Monitoring, New Notification Settings & Our Mobile App

This week, in addition to the numerous updates to the mobile app, we mainly took care of our server setup.

Server Monitoring

In order to avoid system failures in the future, we installed a server monitoring system that monitors all servers and critical processes such as the blockchain import.

Wake me up!

As soon as the system detects any abnormalities, we are immediately informed and can thus prevent failures.
In case of a failure, the system switches to alarm mode and sends a push notification to our admin every 30 seconds. The alarm bypasses the do not disturb function of the iPhone and contains a rather exhausting sound - this should get the admin out of his deepest sleep!

New ETL server

After our monitoring system was installed, we were surprised to find that our blockchain server is currently using 97.2% of its 3.7TB disk capacity. In order to avoid any downtime, we installed a new blockchain server with 7.9TB of NVMe storage. This server is now synchronized and will take over the import of the blockchain data starting today.

New notification options

From today you can configure in your account the channels you want to be notified about certain activities. For most options you can choose between Email, Desktop, Mobile App and Telegram.

Mobile App

The testing phase of our mobile app is going very well. Thanks to your feedback and @pannemann's tireless efforts we are getting closer to the release of 1.0. Besides minor bugfixes we are still in the process of integrating in-app-purchase. Most of the other wishes and suggestions for improvement will be saved for the next versions.

Second Update for our Mobile App TestFlight

Thank you for your great participation in our mobile app test flight. We are very happy about the collected feedback and could already fix the first bugs in the app.

A New Version with the following changes has just been released to our testers:

Changelog

- Text in Wallet’s Detail View better readable in light mode
- Enhanced Hotspot Detail with City Link and POC Descriptions
- Fixed Commission Values in Monthly Report
- Fixed Commission Detail -> Hotspot’s Name instead of Id
- Fixed Link to Beacon in Activity „Beacons sent“
- Activity Witness Navigation Fix for Beaconer
- Fixed Beacon View - Witness City and Street
- Hotspot Navigation from Beacon View
- Increasing debounce for hotspot search to 1000ms
- Option to display entered password in login screen
- Login with Apple Keystore is possible now
- Fixed Activity Filter for Challenger
- Dashboard now shows current filter in title
- Fixed Pull to Refresh on Dashboard
- Fixed Filter for Neighborhood in Dashboard
- Fixed Number Beacons witnessed in Hotspot Detail
- Fixed Beacon Navigation from Hotspot Activities
- Fixed Dashboard Values
- Fixed Beacon Detail View -> Inactive Witnesses marked with inactive Icon

If you still want to get a seat on our test flight head to #beta-test-mobile - there are still a few seats available!

New Contest:

Sindbad has started a contest again. You can win a few months of delicious premium subscription by helping us further in finding bugs. You can find all infos in #contest

HeliumTracker.io Mobile App Testflight started

Our mobile app has just been approved by Apple and Google for the test flight, the first internal tests went well so there is nothing stopping us from releasing the IOS and Android version of HeliumTracker.io.

At this point again many thanks to @Pannemann for his tireless efforts in the last weeks.

We hope you enjoy this first version and look forward to your feedback in the channels suggestions-mobile , bugs-ios and bugs-android on our Discord .

If you are not yet registered for the test flight you can do so in the channel beta-test-mobile.

There are still a few seats available.

New Features & Updates on the Mobile App

First of all, we would like to apologize for the server outage this morning.
For reasons that have not yet been explained, both load balancing servers went down at the same time and the website could not be delivered as a result.
Both HotspotGuard and Telegram notifications continued to run and HeliumTracker also remained in sync with the blockchain.

We will go through the server logs today and cause to find out the exact cause of the outage.

Reminder Feedback Contest:

@sindbad has started a feedback contest:

Contest Time - Ends 01/17/22
Drop a HT review in feedback and a winner will be picked next Monday.
Bonus: If you have old screenshots of the website and how far we've come, your entry will count as two raffle tickets.
Rules: Must be a subscribed member of HeliumTracker's service.
Winner will receive 1 HNT 🙂

Updates on the mobile app:

we made great progress again this week and have been using/testing the app for a few days now. There are still a few little things that need to be done but we are very close to the goal.
We will create the store entries at Apple and Google in the next few days and then start a beta test of the app with you.
Android users might even be lucky enough to get their hands on the app before the beta test. There is no exact, fixed schedule for this yet.

Updates & new features in the past week:

As you know, we are working hard on the mobile app right now. Nevertheless, there were also some interesting updates on the website in the last week:

New Notification System

: HotspotGuard notifications can now be sent to the app via Telegram or Push Notification. You'll also get notifications for incoming/outgoing payments.

New Map Module:

In preparation for the mobile app, we changed the display and functionality of the map. In addition to animated beacons, the hotspot map has now been split into hexagons.

4K Display Support:

Better layout of the dashboard for very large screens.

Customizable Dashboard:

You can now set the layout of your dashboard yourself. All settings like the hotspot filter will be saved.

Account upgrade function:

If you get new hotspots and need a higher tier level you can now upgrade your account automatically. The duration of your membership will be adjusted without additional payment. Please note: existing credit card subscriptions will be cancelled and must be renewed afterwards.

Performance improvements for Business & Enterprise:

We have optimized both the dashboard and the hotspot filters for users with many hotspots. Loading times of several seconds are now a thing of the past.

UNPKG.com removed:

Due to several outages, we stopped using unpkg's content delivery network and now host the corresponding files on our servers.

Performance Improvements: Releasing the handbrake of our servers

We have just released the handbrake on our web servers.

At this moment there are more than 1000 users online at the same time.
It turned out that 2048 concurrent connections are no longer enough to deliver HeliumTracker.io.
We have drastically increased the number of concurrent connections and it looks like we have solved this bottleneck.
The response times of our servers are now back in the optimal range.

We have also just enabled the manual hotspot ping test feature which can ping the last known ip address of your miner and validate that it is online and ports are forwarded properly.
This feature will find its way to the hotspot guard as soon as we have finished the integration of the heliumstatus api to determine realtime ip address information.

@Sinbad has started a feedback contest:

Contest Time - Ends 01/17/21
Drop a HT review in feedback and a winner will be picked next Monday.
Bonus: If you have old screenshots of the website and how far we’ve come, your entry will count as two raffle tickets.
Rules: Must be a subscribed member of HeliumTracker’s service.
Winner will receive 1 HNT 🙂