TTN Mapper - time to shut down?

TTN Network and Services
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I registered the ttnmapper.org domain name on 16 March 2016. We can take this date as the birth date for the public coverage mapping effort. That’s almost 10 years ago now.

TTN Mapper served a few valuable purposes in the early years of The Things Nework.

  • It answered a fundamental question: do I have coverage in this location, or where should I expect to have coverage? This was important to know, as one would otherwise blindly try to get your first LoRa device going, without knowing if the reason is coverage, bad configuration, or a dead device.

  • It gave an instant way to see and feel how good the LoRa technology performs. By doing LoRdriving, many of us walked, cycled and drove up and down city streets, measuring the signal strength and range of the LoRa signal. We were amazed at the results, and kept on pushing for more: by increasing heights, and swapping out antennas.

I think these two key features of TTN Mapper is not required anymore. Gateway prices came down a lot, enabling everyone that wants to experiment with the technology to have a gateway, and therefore guaranteed coverage.

We have proven what the technology can do, and LoRdriving is not that interesting anymore.

The technology has turned more commercial, away from the hoobyists that played with it in 2016. Now, commercial entities run private networks, and a coverage map for a public network is not useful to them.

During these ten years I have personally paid for the cloud hosting part of TTN Mapper’s hosting. And the rest runs in my garage - adding additional hardware and electricity costs. Some people were kind enough to support the service via Patreon or other donations. I even tried adding ads to cover some of the costs. But in the end the service is still a large financial burden on me, and at some point that has to stop.

So, is it time to shut down TTN Mapper?
Please leave your comments, opinions or any ideas down below.

FAQ

Q: Will CoverageMap.net also be shut down?
A: Yes, coveragemap.net along with any private mapping instances host by me, will be shut down.

Q: Can someone else run it instead?
A: The code is open source on Github, so go ahead! My time is limited, but if someone is really serious, I might help get it up and running.

Q: Will the dataset be released?
A: No, unless we can figure out the inherent privacy issues with the data. It is GPS data with timestamps. This is inherently sensitive data, as people’s movements could be inferred from it. For this reason I can not open up the dataset. One could heavily anonymizes the data by stripping IDs and timestamps, but in the process most of its scientific value will be lost. It might be best to completely erase the dataset.

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@jpmeijers thank you for the years of TTN Mapper. :grinning_face:

I am sure most of the community will miss TTN Mapper. :cry:

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Thank you very much for providing and supporting the service.

Sounds like a final decision. That’s a pity, because I enjoyed using the service - to see how many gateways are available in the area and where, or to see what range gateways have, including my own.

Unfortunately, we will lose an interesting and useful feature. It was particularly helpful for newcomers.

I hope someone will continue the project.

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Hi JP.
First off: Thank you for everything you do for/within the TTN-community. Open projects live from user contribution. TTNMapper has always been a valuable tool for me and it would be very sad if the service would go down.
Regarding the latent data privacy issues: aren’t those persons mostly lora mapping drivers? I think they wanted their tracks/data to be public. One way to mitigate this might be to truncate the data, to e.g. 5 or 3 years of retention. You already offered data removal to anybody in the FAQs. I’m interested: did anybody ever complain you did not remove their data when they actually requested it?

Cheers from Germany
Arwed

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First of all, a huge thank you for all the work over these almost 10 years! I think ttnmapper was, and still is, an incredibly valuable resource!

The site is still very useful to me for quickly getting an overview of coverage before starting a new project in a specific location. I am sure this is also true for many others worldwide, especially in regions where gateways are not yet as widespread or common as they might be in more commercially developed areas. The data collected there is a real treasure!

However, I completely understand that hosting and operating costs are a burden in the long run.

Therefore, a suggestion: If there are ways to support the service, like Patreon or other donations, please make the link to it more visible on the site. I wasn’t able to find it myself, for example. A prominent placement might encourage more users to contribute a small amount.

It would be a real pity if ttnmapper had to be shut down. I’m keeping my fingers crossed that a solution can be found to keep the site running!

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hi,

private (but also commercial) user here. i STILL use the map almost on a daily basis to figure out dead spots…and there are MANY even in developed countries (even suburbar areas lack coverage)! so i STILL see the demand for the map when it comes to enhance coverage even in commercial environments. its not always usefull to build an own gw when coverage is given in the area. but who would we know without a coverage map and traveling? e.g. we have small projects even overseas and its not usefull to travel there to find out if we have to bring own gw.

also i DO understand the financial burden of yous. and i never expected a one man show. may i ask why this important project never was handed over to the community long time ago?

and why not start it now?

i cant belive that there is no need/requirement in the community/ttn to keep this alive!

regarding the privacy aspects, yes the logger/gps data is connected to a loggerid. for a transistion the loggerid´s (many other GDPR related data) can be removed and thus privacy friendly transfered to a new/overtakting while keeping the importand gw coverage data.

Sash

ps. i cant speak for the helium users cause ihmo this is scam.

@jpmeijers

can you plz be more specific what the announcement is all about, just to make people aware of the upcoming problems (eg add: This site might be shut down soon) and to fire up the discussion.

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What community? I know of a lot of small communities scattered around the globe, some of them with formal structure (foundation or something like it) but most are a collection of (formerly) enthusiasts people.

So how do you envision this working?

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TTNMapper is a great tool. It would be a pity if it disappear. I use it to know the coverage in my area. I also contribute by sharing my gateways position, and tracking points I can get from my LoraWan devices. Thanks a lot for having run this service during so many years !

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TTN Mapper ist ein sehr wertvolles Werkzeug. Gerade ist es wertvoll für Menschen, die gerade beginnen (wie ich). Ich kann die Abdeckung in der Umgebung sehen und ich kann die Abdeckung des eigenen Gateways prüfen. Ich habe extra 2 GPS-Tracker gekauft, die ich und meine Frau herumtragen, damit hier mit Daten beigetragen werden kann.

Bitte das Abschalten noch etwas verzögern und an einer gut sichtbaren Stelle einen Spendenaufrauf einblenden. Ich würde spenden. Ich würde sogar einen regelmäßigen Beitrag leisten. Damit kann die finanzielle Last von einem einzelnen Menschen auf viele verteilt werden. Es könnte klappen, wie es mit anderen Projekten auch klappt.

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Ich habe als Beginn der Unterstützung 20,00 EUR gesendet.

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Your service is the best LoRaWAN mapping map. I used it almost every day. It’s a pity to loose it. :frowning:

I remember the days that with my mobile phone and a LoRaWAN firmware I could wardrive.

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I really really like TTN Mapper, mostly for use with helium, I got the frontend setup I would like to know what database i need to setup for running this locally if this get shut down. Could we get a simple docker container to setup for it?

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Be sad to see it go. I use it most days for basic tracking and quick coverage checks. God forbid a new TTN gateway appears — it’s one of the few ways to spot changes now. Unfortunately we’ve lost around 90% of our local gateways in the last two years. TI have been more than happy to lean on my gateways for over a decade, but sadly they don’t return the favour. It’s one of several reasons things are slowly disappearing.

I’ll also add that the constant negative tone on here towards anyone who isn’t 100% on-message (given TI pay for the forum, yes we know this — banging on about it takes the joy out of living) has not helped. It’s pushed people away from what used to be a small but enthusiastic IoT space. I know I could have — and would have — contributed more myself, but the tone has changed, sadly. I did try to raise the matter with the admins, but it was simply ignored.

For my part, I’ve not given up. Only this week I’ve opened a dialogue with the local university about restoring their publicly funded TTN infrastructure, with the hope of supporting local startups.

Losing TTN Mapper would be a real shame and yet another signal of where things are heading.

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I don’t know how you think TI leans on your gateways, they simply provide the LoRaWAN servers for the community for free (while it costs them a lot of money) and for commercial customers. Those commercial customers might lean on your gateways, recent forum messages show examples of people wanting to deploy devices without gateways, however most, if not all, commercial parties I’ve encountered over the years add their own gateways to their TI subscription as they can’t rely on community gateways for their offerings.

It was actually a large and enthusiastic IoT space 10 years ago. At that time there were (almost) no commercial devices available and techies were challenged by this exiting new technology. These days it’s old and stale news, it’s commodity. There are tons of devices available from different vendors and from what I’m seeing in the local community, people found cheaper devices for their use cases and the techies moved on to new(er) things like meshtastic.

Fully agree. However it takes a considerable amount of money to keep it running and the community doesn’t seem interested in helping out with funding in a significant way. In stead most take it for granted and feel entitled to service when they perceive an issue with the service. Given the cost I am surprised @jpmeijers was able to keep it running this many years. We should be grateful it has been available all this time.

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THANK YOU, JP! - in bold & uppercase letters - for developing, voluntarily hosting and maintaining this phantastic tool for all of us, over so long period! I only discovered it just recently… - so for the discussion, let me please contribute a newcomer’s perspective here: Having just stepped into the LoRaWAN world, I feel TTN Mapper actually does serve a central purpose, still now and here in 2025: At least for a hobbyist like me, it is THE eye opener to that amazing technology, as it renders LoRaWAN tangible! TTN Mapper is what you are typically shown first in discussions with LoRa enthusiasts, e.g. on Maker Faire, and it was what drew me specifically to TTN over any other LoRaWAN platforms. Building a mapping node, writing own code for it, exploring coverage of my newly installed gateway, tweaking the antenna - these were the simple door-opening projects that have helped me understand TTN. I’m sure many others found their way here similarly - and probably some of them have grown into professionals meanwhile, or have brought the technology to their employers…? So, beyond its purely technical purpose (that I still use and consider helpful), I believe TTN Mapper is a powerful ambassador for TTN as it makes the global network visual, and exciting for newcomers. It’s not just a tool, it’s a community builder and a growth engine for TTN. I can imagine a future where The Things Industry integrates some of this “mapper” functionality - showcasing public gateway locations and community-generated coverage data. It could be a win-win, preserving the spirit of TTN Mapper while supporting the ecosystem’s growth.

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It’s a point of view or matter of perception and I well aware that this is largely aimed at me, given that I do the banging.

The easy thing for TTI to solve many of the issues with the blatant abuse of the TTN servers by a minority was to restrict us all on the number of devices to a draconian level. The moderators put forward the community case for the relatively liberal use which we continue to enjoy. This took some preparation, deliberations & discussions which sometimes got rather fraught as any business negotiation can be, with nothing for us to offer other than a different business perspective.

The ‘banging’ is only directed at those that come on to declare that they are breaching the FUP and why doesn’t their thing work properly, the majority of whom aren’t aware of the size of the bills and clearly don’t care who’s paying for them as long as they can do as they like. What gives the game away to me when I inform them of the reality they risk jeopardising, is that they are either a first time poster or have been dormant on the forum & it’s flagged they haven’t posted in over a year.

The alternative is that we just don’t bother policing ourselves and one day we hit peak server load and the bill payers lose their sense of humour and curtail activity.

I think the use of someone else’s servers attitude is somewhat reflected in the new forum joiners pleading the case for continued use. We’ve been here in the last few months with the servers in JP’s garage suffering with consequential downtime but nothing really changed then and I’d not anticipate a sudden upturn in income commensurate with the investment in hardware, electricity, system maintenance & support.

As I’ve been given plenty of robust feedback over the years, So I’ve done plenty of research on moderation policies on other technical forums and followed some of the more ‘entertaining’ threads that have come to light to see how they are handled. I’m also use various other forums where I’m a user but I see the same old patterns from others. If you come here prepared with some core knowledge, great. But like most forums, the hit & run, hand it to me on a silver platter, expectant brigade get told clearly what they need to shape up or ship out.

I recently purchased a kit for a rather complex device that required some very careful final wiring and soldering of through-hole components. I can tell from the published order wait list how many units are sold each month, 95% of which are built and used just fine after reading the docs and doing the background learning. But if you read the support forum, you’d think that the kit is unusable based on the number of posts that repeat the same questions time & time again or propose fixes or solutions that are totally disproportionate or inappropriate. It has been quite satisfying putting some hard data to my suspicions after all this time.

As such, I sleep just fine at night with regard to this forum.

As for TTN Mapper, there are plenty of part-baked solutions up on GitHub. I’ve got maps embedded in websites using leaflet, so processing the gateway location data for an online map is just about cranking the handle. But paying for the hosting, that’s a whole other thing and I’ve already got plenty of that going on for other community projects. Doing the coverage mapping is a whole other level and I know that @jpmeijers garage doesn’t just have one tiny PC in the corner to do the work.

Given the way the free / freemium / low-cost-subscription market works on the internet, technical or otherwise, I think JP is being nice by giving us a last gasp but also totally bonkers that he thinks it will make any significant difference to what is an almost inevitable outcome.

So whilst I’ve got my own solution that I’ve used, I do thank JP for the massive contribution he’s made to TTN but I’d recommend he turn off TTN Mapper forthwith and use the money & time for something fun.

In the meanwhile, new solutions can be created but given the way Open Source now works with everyone having their own master plan for world domination, we need to find someone with time on their hands to do it all so it is coherent & works.