The Greenhouse is Open

Back in July 2022, Pollen Mobile announced Greenhouse — our mobile gateway in the cloud that removed the need for physical access gateways (aka AGWs) to connect radios to the network. Our reason for migrating away from physical AGWs was simple: not only are physical gateways clunky, they introduce a source of failure in the network, and unnecessary cost.

Since then, we’ve been developing the robustness of the Greenhouse ecosystem to support critical features necessary for a viable commercial network, including:

• The ability to support handovers from Flower to Flower
• The ability to prevent any actor from intercepting data via the Pollen IEPS (Internet Egress Privacy Service)
• The ability for Flowers to report on their usage to receive payments

We’re delighted to announce that as of today, nearly* all Flowers are now able to run and operate on Greenhouse. As we onboard paid data plans in the coming weeks, all Flowers that are currently running on a physical AGW (aka stem), that would like to be compensated for their data haul, need to be migrated onto Greenhouse.

Which Flowers are eligible for a Greenhouse upgrade?

*At this time, Baicells has not yet delivered a workable update to that firmware that reliable reports the usage statistics for the Dandelions (227s). They are aware of the issue this poses to the community and have indicated they will do their best to make the necessary changes.

How do I upgrade my Flower to Greenhouse?

To get your Flower onto Greenhouse, submit this form and our team will follow up with next steps. At this time, the migration process is estimated to take between 3–5 days per Flower, though wait times may be longer depending on the length of the queue. To receive the Greenhouse update, your Flower must be online and connected to the internet.

What do I do with my AGW?

Once your Flower has successfully migrated onto Greenhouse, your physical AGW is no longer needed. You can unplug and be free! Physical AGWs are MinisForum mini PCs. These devices are unlocked and you are free to install any operating system or software of your choosing. Click here to learn more about MinisForum Mini-PCs.

What if I don’t upgrade my Flower to Greenhouse?

Flowers that continue to use physical AGWs will be able to do so for the near-term, however, we will be phasing out support for AGW Flowers as we evolve the Greenhouse technology. Keep in mind, only Flowers that are running on Greenhouse are able to be paid for the data that they move for Pollen subscribers.

I have more questions about this migration. Who can I contact?

Reach out to us at support.pollenmobile.io and we’ll answer your specific questions about your Greenhouse migration.