You can set daily, weekly or monthly reports and you can choose which statistics you want to include.

What’s new?

• Added Social Attributes to Customer/Subscriber API calls
• New API call: Transactions (please check API Reference). Get all new accesses by type (mac, voucher, social, paid). A new transaction is created whenever a user or device gets a new access.
• Custom data for data capture is now available with Mac based Transaction API
• New authentication method: Authentication moved to the header (please check docs)

Webhooks

Along with the new API, a new function is released, called Webhooks. Webhooks are ‘HTTP callbacks’, that are triggered by specific events. You can use them to send customer/transaction data to your servers. So every time there is a new customer registration/subscription, or a new transaction, our system can call an external page (defined by you) and send user/transaction data there. So these are PUSH functions (on the contrary API calls are triggered by you so those are PULL functions).

You can define webhooks from the Control Center under Tools & Settings > Webhooks menu. Webhooks are also available for secondary operators if you gave access for them to check users & transactions data.

You can check webhooks documentation here.

Zapier updates

New functions are availabe at Zapier. Currently the new ZAP is invite only, so be sure you try it out by following this link.

Check out their setup guide here.

They also provide support for the hotspot part. You can read their IgniteNet HotspotSystem Setup Guide.

You must not incentivize people to use social plugins or to like a Page. This includes offering rewards, or gating apps or app content based on whether or not a person has liked a Page. It remains acceptable to incentivize people to login to your app, checkin at a place or enter a promotion on your app’s Page. To ensure quality connections and help businesses reach the people who matter to them, we want people to like Pages because they want to connect and hear from the business, not because of artificial incentives. We believe this update will benefit people and advertisers alike.

Basically Facebook wants users to like brand pages because they actually “like” them, not because they were promised some freebie or contest entry for doing it.

The suggested method now is Checkin/Wallpost which will also grow your userbase. More check-ins and engagement with your Page will improve how it ranks in search too.

And you can still put the LIKE button on the page after successful login and ask people to LIKE your page if they want. But they cannot be forced to do so.

You can read more about new Social Options here

If you are a White Label operator and you have your own facebook app, you need to send it for review to Facebook if you wish to use the Checkin feature. The process is described here (you don’t have to create a new app, you need to edit your existing one!)

If you are using custom skins and edited the main_social.inc.html, you need to make some changes in that template:

Search for this code:

hotsposystem.socialWifi.accept();

Replace with:

window.location='facebook/{LANG}/redirect/login?uamip={UAMIP}&uamport={UAMPORT}&mac={MAC}&pwd={PWD}&useurl={USERURL}&chal={CHALLENGE}&nasid={NASID}&operator={OPERATOR}&location={LOCATION_ID}&lang={LANG}';

We are also about to announce a new pricing plan (which you will definately LIKE so stay tuned…

Now it’s possible to create a custom package which has an expiration of 3, 6 or 12 months. You can sell these packages online or you can create vouchers and sell them for cash.

In case you generate your own vouchers with “Pay-As-You-Go”, or using the Vouchers API, these vouchers will cost you 3,6 or 12 credits in case you generate them as free, if you generate them as paid vouchers, they will cost 2 times more. For example:

• Free voucher for 6 months – 6 credits will be deducted for each
• Paid voucher for 12 months – 24 credits will be deducted for each

Longer packages cannot be used for free trial or as a free package in case of a subscription.

The EdgeRouter is a powerful piece of hardware, advertised as “The world’s first million-packet-per-second router priced under $100“.

Hardware Details:

• Dual-core MIPS64 processor with hardware acceleration for packet processing and encryption/decryption
• 3 RJ-45 Gigabit Ethernet ports
• 512 MB DDR2 RAM
• (Layer-3 base forwarding) 1,000,000 pps for 64-byte packets. Line rate (3 Gbps) across all three ports for 512-byte packets and higher

We have managed to provide a simple way to set this router up as a hotspot, providing a hotspot connection on one of the ethernet ports, which makes it perfect if you wish to keep your existing access points and network setup, but wants to add a hotspot functionality. Our installation script installs and sets up a special build of Coovachilli so you don’t need to setup anything manually.

You can find the installation guide here, and you can also find an example about how we setup campground hotspot using other ubiquiti access points (nano stations, pico stations, etc), and one example about setting up a hotspot with EdgeRouter and UniFi.

What does the Voucher Thermal Printer do?

This is the world’s first thermal printer which can print vouchers from the cloud. This means that:

1. You don’t need to have a dedicated hotspot gateway solution which has its own thermal printer. You can set up a hotspot with any router we support and you can print the codes independently.
2. You don’t have to be physically in the location where the codes can be used. You can put the printer anywhere you want (assuming you have an internet connection there)
3. Unlike other similar cloud-based solutions, NO COMPUTER IS REQUIRED to print out voucher codes. Just turn the printer on, it will connect to a wireless network automatically, then press the green button and VOILÁ! The code is there and ready to use!
4. You can even print out codes which can work in any of your locations. If you operate a big hotspot network, this can be a life saver!

Everything can be configured from the Control Center, you can upload a logo, change text, etc.

How much does it cost?

You can pre-order the printer now for $200 USD, which includes shipping. Final price can be a bit higher.

Also, you need to have a Hotspot FREE Voucher subscription or have voucher credits to print out voucher codes. The printer generates a code on the fly and deducts 1 credit if you print out a free code, and deducts 2 credits in case you print out a pay-per-use code.

Do you have a video of the printing process?

Here is a quick video of printing out a voucher code (final printed image will be different):

Dimensions of the printer: 13,2mm (width) x 10,2mm (height) x 10mm (depth)

We have added a new FAQ section with quick questions and answers and re-categorised and reviewed our knowledge base articles as well.

What you are seeing now is a section where we post news and updates whenever we make some changes or add new features to the system.

Hope you’ll like it!

Would you like to look behind the scenes? Read our article about how we decided to change our Help Desk.