How Harbor works#

Basic points#

Tip

Did you read Terminology? Harry says: “Without reading our terms you will be lost at sea!”

HarborHarry

These are important points that you need to understand from how Harbor works.

  • Harbor towers use bluetooth instead of the internet. Harbor towers piggyback off of the user’s device internet signal in order to communicate with harbor servers.

  • Harbor uses a mobile SDK (iOS Native, Android Native, and React Native). To establish a session with the Towers and use the tokens to open the lockers.

  • The rest of the interactions happen between your backend and Harbor. Such as: get locations availability, make a reservation, get a token to open a locker, etc.

Tip

Remember: The board that you are assigned is a Harbor Controller Board, not a locker, and will be referred to as such throughout this documentation. If you don’t have one of these boards order one Here.

HarborHarry

Flow for a delivery#

Here is a bird’s eye view of the delivery process.

  • “User” represents The user’s device before any kind of connection to the tower.

  • “Server” represents your backend service.

  • “AuthenticatedUser” Represents the user’s device after the session has started and the user has authenticated.

  • The “Tower” is a single tower of the Harbor Public Network.

locker layout
Your backend is responsible for sending the SDK authorization token and the open locker tokens to the mobile App.
The mobile SDK will use the authorization token to start a session with the Tower, and the open locker token to open the locker in the tower.

Default Locker Sizes + Layout#

locker layout

Now that you have an idea of how this all works, let’s get your credentials and a Tower board to integrate! Get credentials