IoT & Connectivity Tips

Building More Complex Tests in JMeter Overview This is the second in a series of articles which help inform how to do user load testing in ThingWorx. This article picks up where the previous left off, continuing with the project created there. The screenshots do appear a little differently here because a new “Look and Feel” was selected for the JMeter application (switched from “Metal” to “Windows Classic”) to provide more readable screenshots. In this guide, we are going to make the very simple project more complex, working towards a better representation of a real load test. The steps below walk you through how to create and configure thread groups and parameterize the processes and procedures defined by each thread group.   Adding More Thread Groups Within JMeter, thread groups are used to organize the HTTP requests in a test into various processes or procedures, such that different mashups (and all of the HTTP requests required on each) or processes can be executed simultaneo

We are bringing the Liveworx UX Lab to you this year! Contribute to the design and development of PTC’s IoT & AR products from the comfort of your home.   Participate in online 1:1 session with PTC Researchers and Designers to take our prototypes & conceptual designs for a spin, share your expertise to directly impact the experience of our future products.   For all Liveworx 2020 UX Lab sessions, click here   IoT & AR session links: SOLUTION CENTRAL: User Management SOLUTION CENTRAL: PTC Solution Deployment SERVICE: Remote Monitoring Solution THINGWORX: Managing Building Blocks in Composer THINGWORX KEPWARE EDGE: Container Based Software at Scale EDGE: Next Generation IoT Edge (Asset) Manager THINGWORX: Asset Modeling DIGITAL PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT SOLUTION: Bottleneck ID & Balanced Scorecard MANUFACTURING: PTC Solution Strategy using Building Blocks IMPLEMENTING AR and IOT: Successes and Difficulties VUFORIA EDITOR: Authoring Work Instructions VUFORIA E

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Navigate 1.6.0 to 1.7.0     Description:   How to use InfoEngine tasks to retrieve and take actions on Windchill data to use in Navigate services The following agenda is reviewed in the session: Use case introduction Create I*E task Create service Create Mashups Execute I*E Task       The concepts of this session are still valid for newer Navigate versions, but the session was recorded using old Composer

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Navigate 1.8.0 to 1.9.0     Description:   New improvements of the ThingWorx Navigate Installer with the following agenda: What's new Load Balancer Multiple Windchill Systems Integration Runtime NSSM How to select files to download Installer installation steps Demo Questions         Additional information How to install PTC Navigate

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Navigate 1.6.0 to 8.5.0     Description:     How to use PingFederate script: Prerequisites Configuration Run the script Generated artifacts Live Demo         Associated documentation is available in PTC Single Sign On Architecture and Configuration Overview guide: PTC Single Sign-on Architecture and Configuration Overview  

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Navigate 1.6.0 to 8.5.0   Description:   Covers Single Sign On concepts and main items to take into account when defining SSO architecture, with the following agenda: What is Single Sign on? What is PTC Strategy for Single Sign on? How does PingFederate fits in the existing SSO Federation? What products currently can be configured for SSO? Optional SSO in Navigate 1.6 What are the key diferences in SSO over the different Navigate versions? What are we doing internally to prepare for SSO? What resources are available for SSO discussions?         Related articles for further information Related Service: Configure SSO for Navigate

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Covers how to apply patch upgrades to ThingWorx installation, with the following agenda: How to read ThingWorx version Upgrading to a major/minor version of the platform Focus on upgrading to a patch version of the platform Upgrading extensions       Always check the patch release notes for additional information and specific steps

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Covers the main topics that need to be considered when evaluating or designing a scalability strategy for the environment and applications The agenda contains the following topics: Introduction Connection Server Federation High Availability       Some of the databases mentioned in the presentation are no longer supported Please refer to the compatibility matrix to check supported databases Related Articles How to configure a Federate architecture Is high availability supported in ThingWorx  

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.4   Description:   A practical example of how to build a data model in ThingWorx following a pre-defined design Following topics are covered: Review existing Design Plan Build all required entities in ThingWorx Composer Test the model and review scalability and reusability         The session was recorded using the old ThingWorx Composer, but the concepts are still applicable Related Success Service - Principles of Thingworx Modeling Related Service - Design your Thingworx Model

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.4   Description:   Concepts and basic Mashup design using an use case as example Following topics are covered: Recap Scenario Requirements and review concept design Introduction to Mashup Builder Design Mashup to visualize data     Related Success Service The session was recorded using the old ThingWorx Composer, but the concepts are still applicable

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Introduction to Edge connectivity in Thingworx Foundation: Edge concept and definition Available edge products Why use Edge products What is Edge Microserver and Lua Script Resource What are the SDKs What are connection servers AlwaysOn and HTTP protocols ThingTemplates to connect remote devices     The session was recorded in an old ThingWorx version, but all the concepts are still applicable

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 8.3 to 8.5   Description:   Installation walkthrough of ThingWorx foundation using PostgreSQL, materializing some main steps that might be difficult to read in the installation guides       Reference installation guides for each version

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Concepts and methodology to design a data model using an use case as example The following topics are covered: Real-world Product Example ThingWorx Terminology and concepts Formulate an implementation Strategy       Related Success Service

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.4   Description:   Strategy and tools for Thingworx application backups Backup Terminology and concepts Drivers to define a backup strategy Tips for executing backup in a Thingworx instance: Tomcat, certificates, Configuration and file system data, application specific files, database     Neo4J database mentioned in the session is no longer supported For more information check Best Practices for ThingWorx Backup

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 8.0 to 8.5; ThingWorx Navigate 1.5.0 to 8.5.0   Description:   Definition and concepts of Single Sign On (SSO), terminologies, components and architecture, as well as configuration prerequisites and high level steps to configure using PingFederation with Windchill and Navigate and main troubleshooting techniques    

Applicable Releases: ThingWorx Platform 7.0 to 8.5   Description:   Main concepts and best practices for devops methodology such as Naming Conventions Setup and management of environments for development and testing Import/Export process and application deployment Use of Tags and Project to control your development Coding Standards Validation best practices         For project packaging and deployment, make sure to check the content about Solution Central created after this session was released

    Hi, everyone!   In previous tech tips, I’ve introduced the ThingWorx 9.0 active-active clustering feature and provided architectural details and configurations. If you haven’t already, I recommend you check them out to learn more about how active-active clustering enables higher availability for ThingWorx: 9.0 Sneak Peek: Active-Active Clustering for ThingWorx 9.0 Sneak Peek: ThingWorx Architecture for Active-Active Clustering 9.0 Sneak Peek: Flexible Deployments of Active-Active Clustering for ThingWorx “ThingWorx on Air” Ep. 08: FAQs: ThingWorx Active-Active Clustering for Higher Availability   Today, I’ll provide more details around the load balancer in the active-active clustering architecture, some of its requirements, and a few configuration examples. Ready? Here we go! Here are the top four FAQs around the load balancer that will help you maximize your use of active-active clustering.   What do you mean by load balancing? Load balancing is the pro

Hello!   “ThingWorx on Air” Episode 9 is now available! Grab your headphones and listen to Neal, an Azure subject matter expert, and Janie, a PM focused on Azure functionality, introduce a new integration we’re working on between Kepware, Azure IoT Edge, Azure IoT Hub and ThingWorx.   Discover how you’ll be able to leverage and model OPC UA data directly in the Thing Model, how you’ll be able to connect just about any OPC UA device through the Azure stack and to the Cloud, and so much more. We can’t wait to continue to extend ThingWorx functionality to support industry standards like the OPC UA protocols.   Are you excited? Wish you could get your hands on this functionality early? You can! Reach out to Janie at jpascoe@ptc.com to learn how you can become involved in an exclusive OPC UA & ThingWorx preview program.   Enjoy the episode and let me know what you think below!   Stay connected, Kaya

This small tutorial enables you to manage payload decoding for Adeunis Devices within ThingWorx Composer in less than 10 minutes.  Adeunis Devices communicates on LPWAN networks (LoRaWAN / Sigfox) covering sectors such as smart building, smart industry and smart city. The encoding is also possible but it will be covered in another article.   1. Get Adeunis Codec Adeunis is providing a codec enabling payload encoding and decoding.  Download here the resource file containing the codec.  Unzip the file and edit "script.txt" with your favorite text editor. Copy all text contained in the file.   2.  Create AdeunisCodec Thing Create a Thing called "AdeunisCodec" based on the GenericThing Template.   3. Create a service called "Decode" Create a Decode Service with the following setup: Inputs: type (String), payload (String) Output as JSON Past the previously copied "script.txt" content Save   4. Correct a couple of Warnings Remove all "var c

If you ever tested mashup rendering on mobile phones, you probably experienced that the mashup was not sizing to fit your mobile display. This "MobileHeader" extension enables to auto adapt the mashup to mobile displays.   It adds the following parameters to the HTML header: <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1.0, maximum-scale=1.0, user-scalable=0"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-capable" content="yes"> <meta name="apple-mobile-web-app-status-bar-style" content="black-translucent">   In the composer just drop the "MobileHeader" extension into a section of the mashup.   This extension was tested until version 7.4.

  It’s here! It’s happening! ThingWorx 9.0 released today!   Unleash the Power of Now and leverage exciting new features like: Improved performance and higher availability via active-active clustering Faster, more streamlined development with: New widgets like line, bar & schedule charts Undo & redo functionality in Mashup Builder (look out for an upcoming Ask Kaya tech tip) New Mashup mobile settings Simpler management of entities and applications: Improved auditing scale & usability Ability to group entities via Thing Groups Ability to deploy apps built prior to 8.5 with Solution Central And more—like: Confidence model training Delegated authorization for Flow [Navigate] Component-based app development for custom production use apps (upgrade-safe) And even more—the list goes on and on. Check out the full list of new functionality in the 9.0 release notes and discover our What’s New page.   Access 9.0 under “ThingWorx Foundat

  Hello everyone!   We’re back with Episode 08 of ThingWorx on Air! In this episode, I sit down with Ryan Servais, one of our High Availability (HA) experts on the ThingWorx product management team. We continue our HA discussion from previous Ask Kaya tech tips and cover some frequently asked questions like what are the benefits of active-active clustering? How does active-active clustering enable horizontal scale? How can I get started? Brand-new to active-active clustering? Check out these tech tips to start: 9.0 Sneak Peek: Active-Active Clustering for ThingWorx 9.0 Sneak Peek: ThingWorx Architecture for Active-Active Clustering 9.0 Sneak Peek: Flexible Deployments of Active-Active Clustering for ThingWorx Click here to listen to how active-active clustering can help you in a variety of scenarios: If you have a request overflow in production and your servers are slowing down, try out active-active clustering! If your IT admin keeps delaying replacing the network card o

Hi all,   ThingWorx contains lots of useful functionality for your services (last count is 339 Snippets in ThingWorx 8.5.2). These snippets are an important part of the platform application building capabilities, and most of them are simple enough to understand based on their name and the description that appears when hovering on them.   I have witnessed that however, in some cases, the platform users are not aware of their full capabilities. With this in mind, I started creating some time ago a Snippet Guide for my personal use that I'm sharing now with the community. It contains additional explanations, documentation links and sample source code tested by me.   Please bear in mind that it was done for an earlier ThingWorx version and I did not have enough time to update it for 8.5.x, but it should work the same here as well.   This enhanced documentation is not supported by PTC, so please 1. do not open a Tech Support ticket based on the content of this document a

Disclaimer: Please note that, while the ThingWorx Git Backup Extension is a very useful tool, it is not a PTC product, nor is it supported by PTC.   Hi ThingWorx users,   Trying to manage your ThingWorx application artifacts in a CI process? Wondering who changed that line of code in your Thing Service? Trying to see what your Mashup looked like last release? Time to Git excited! Introducing the Git Backup Extension, an open-source tool available here to offer a stronger integration with the Git source repository. This Git feature can push or pull code and artifacts (like entities, data exports or extension dependencies) to your Git repository.   Here are some highlights of how this works within ThingWorx:   First, configure your Git repo to work with ThingWorx by creating a Git Backup Thing. Then, simply open your new Thing, navigate to the Configuration editor and enter information like your Git URL, your Git username and password, your repo and branch names,

Hiya,   I recently prepared a short demo which shows how to onboard and use Azure IoT devices in ThingWorx and added some usability tips and tricks to help others who might struggle with some of the things that I did.     The good news... I recorded and posted it to YouTube here.   •Connect Azure IoT Hub with ThingWorx (to be updated soon for 9.0 release) •Using the Azure IoT Dev Kit with ThingWorx •Getting the Azure IoT Hub Connector Up and Running (V3/8.5)   Enjoy, and don't hesitate to comment with your own tips and feedback.   Cheers,   Greg