Onboarding an Edge Gateway
Onboarding connects a board to the VION platform. You flash a prebuilt image, power on the device, and register the device identifier it shows you in the Dashboard onboarding wizard. On first boot the device commissions itself — no SSH access or provisioning script is involved.
Overview
The diagram below shows the participants and the order of the commissioning stages.
Step 1: Start the wizard
In the Dashboard, start the onboarding process. The wizard asks you to:
- Select a use case — Energy Management, Building Automation, or an empty project
- Create a project — provide a company name and project name
- Choose a gateway type — Simulation (no hardware needed) or Own hardware
If you choose Simulation, VION Cloud creates a simulated gateway and you can skip the flashing steps. If you choose Own hardware, continue below.
Step 2: Download the board image
Identify your board on the supported devices page and download its image. The image is a gzip-compressed file served from https://images.vion.swiss/releases/<board>.img.gz, where <board> is the token for your board.
Step 3: Flash the image
Write the image to the SD card or eMMC with balenaEtcher (recommended) or another raw image writer: select the .img.gz you downloaded, select the target card, and write. The tool decompresses the image as it writes. Per-device settings such as WiFi and hostname are configured through an interactive commissioning prompt on the device's first login.
Step 4: Boot the device
Insert the SD card or eMMC into the board and apply power. The first boot runs auto-commissioning: it starts Docker, registers the Mender client, and enrolls a device certificate with Step CA. These tools are baked into the image, so nothing is installed over the network at this stage.
When commissioning reaches the point where it needs to be registered, the device shows a device identifier derived from the board's hardware. This identifier is stable across reflashes — flashing a fresh image onto the same board produces the same identifier.
Step 5: Register the device identifier
Enter the device identifier from the previous step into the wizard's Set up VION step. Registering the identifier approves the device, after which VION Cloud issues its certificate and accepts it into Mender.
Commissioning status
After you enter the identifier, the wizard shows live commissioning status. The stages are:
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Key approved — waiting for the device | You registered the identifier; VION Cloud is waiting for the device to check in. |
| Certificate issued | The device requested and received its mTLS certificate from Step CA. |
| Device accepted | VION Cloud accepted the device into Mender. |
| Device ready | Commissioning finished; the device is ready for software deployment. |
| Timed out — check the device | The device did not check in within the commissioning window. Confirm it is powered and online. |
| Commissioning failed | Commissioning could not complete. See Troubleshooting. |
Once the device is ready, its initial software (Dale runtime, Mesh) is deployed and the wizard reports the gateway as connected. Depending on the onboarding flow, this deployment runs automatically or you trigger it from the Dashboard.
What happens after onboarding
Once the gateway shows as connected:
- The Dale runtime is running and ready to execute logic blocks
- Mesh is connected to VION Cloud and bridges telemetry and commands
- Telemetry is flowing to the observability stack
- You can deploy logic block libraries and configure logic in the Dashboard
For day-to-day management, see Dashboard Setup.