IoT & Connectivity Tips

Time series prediction uses a model to predict future values based on previously observed values. Time series data differs somewhat from non-time series data in both the formatting of the data and the training of predictive models. This article will highlight several important considerations when dealing with time series data. Preparing Time Series Data: The data must contain exactly one field with Op Type “TEMPORAL” and one field with Op Type “ENTITY_ID”, which defines the identifier for an entity, such as a machine serial number. The ENTITY_ID field should remain the same as long as there are no missing timestamps and it is within the same asset but should be different for different assets or asset runs in order to accurately assign history during model training and scoring.     The TEMPORAL field is a numeric field indicating the order of the data rows for a specific entity . One should also ensure that data is formatted such that the timestamps are equally spaced (for exa

Reminder (and for some, announcement!) that the new ThingWorx 8 sizing guide is available here  https://www.ptc.com/en/support/refdoc/ThingWorx_Platform/8.0/ThingWorx_Platform_8_x_Sizing_Guide

With the advent of faster and cheaper hardware, and owing to vast improvements in connectivity such as Gigabit networks and 5G, data is collected and processed at an ever increasing pace. As such, there is a related need for the Analytical Models built on top of such data to evolve over time. As part of this evolution, modelling experiments with more data, new variables, new techniques, and different training parameters will be performed. The resulting models need to be tracked, monitored, and appropriate versions need to be used for scoring in various scenarios. This creates the need for version control of Analytical Models.   ThingWorx Analytics makes it easy to implement an “Analytics Model Version Control” system via two mechanisms: A job Id and timestamp based identification system, so if a model with the same jobName (model name) is retrained, the old model will still exist and can be easily retrieved A tagging mechanism for the above jobs   Before using the above tec

While I was writing my previous post about Purging ValueStream entries from Deleted Things , it occurred to me that a similar issue would happen to those using the InfluxDB as persistence provider for their ValueStreams.   I wanted to take the opportunity that the logic is still fresh in my mind and extend the utility to do the same thing with InfluxDB. I also used the opportunity to create a dynamic InfoTable as it's been a while since I did it.    Also, it shows how to directly interact with the InfluxDB through its API.    The modification is based on a new thing called influxDBConnector  which has the following services:   dropMeasurements: Deletes all the DB entries related to a Thing; getAllEntries: Queries all entries related to a Thing. It has a string output; getAllEntriesTable: Queries all entries related to a Thing. Infotable output; getMissingThings: Queries ThingWorx Things tables and InfluxDB measurements. It filters

  Hi everyone,   If you’ve been curious about Solution Central, our new cloud tool for application management and deployment, and wondered how it can help your existing apps, then get ready because we have a feature for you! Our initial release of Solution Central focused on deploying apps built on 8.5 or later. Today, whether big or small, round or square, red or blue, built by PTC or by you, all apps can be deployed using Solution Central. Using Operator Advisor 8.4? We got you covered. Using an old extension? No worries. Using an app built on 7.2? Not a problem. Solution Central can deploy all apps.   This ability to deploy any app, regardless of which version it was created on, is just one of the many improvements we’re releasing to help you accelerate your deployment. You can take advantage of this latest capability in ThingWorx 8.5.3 and Solution Central 1.0.3. Try it out today!   We’re not stopping there, though.   We have a lot that we’re working on an

ThingWorx 8.5 Sizing Guide Sizing is a very important part of the application design process, answering such questions as: how much hardware is required? What specifications does this hardware need to handle the expected load? And therefore, what is the overall cost of setting up and maintaining the ThingWorx environment? Properly sizing the environment before development begins ensures that there are no unexpected costs or limitations to application functionality later on down the road.   "Hardware sizing is driven by many factors - some more easily calculated than others", as stated in the new ThingWorx 8.5 Sizing Guide. "Measures like data streaming frequency (the data ingestion component)and HTTP request volume (the data visualization component) are easilycalculated... However, sizing considerations for the data processing component of theapplication can depend largely on business use cases and application design." Enterprise-Ready applications have the capacity to hand

When using Value Streams to log historical data, there's a service to purge the ValueStream entries from the Thing itself. But, what to do when a Thing that once logged values into a ValueStream was deleted? Currently, there's no OOTB way to delete these entries if they're not being used anymore. Currently, I was asked this question and wanted to share this with the entire community. I created a utility application that queries directly the TWX DB for Things that are present in the ValueStream but don't exist anymore and allows a user to purge it.    These services are considering  PostgreSQLServer as persistence provider for the ValueStreams. The services can be modified if you're using SQLServer.  Do not apply for InfluxDB persistence providers   The twxDBConnector thing is based on the PostgreSqlServer template, that is present in the Relational Databases extension. It has 4  main services:   getEntriesToPurge:  Queries the TWX

    Raise your hand if you’re ready for seamless, rapid deployment of your ThingWorx applications with visibility into your various environments! It’s time to say goodbye to error-prone deployments with manual dependency tracking and hello to Solution Central!   Releasing this fall as part of 8.5, Solution Central is a brand-new cloud service coming to the ThingWorx platform to enable you to efficiently manage your ThingWorx applications across the enterprise.   With Solution Central, you’ll no longer be caught chasing missing dependencies (like ThingShapes, Mashups, templates or library extensions). Solution Central automatically identifies and packages up the dependencies required for your application. No more manual dependency madness!   Whether you’re managing many apps deployed to a few environments or a single app deployed to hundreds of environments, Solution Central allows you to accelerate your deployment through an intuitive UI or powerful APIs for a

The following script is a component of the Axeda Connected Configuration (CMDB) feature.  It is used to provide configuration data for controlling package deployments via Connected Content (SCM).​ConfigItem_CRU.groovy*Takes a POST request, not parametersimport static com.axeda.sdk.v2.dsl.Bridges.*import com.axeda.drm.sdk.scripto.Requestimport com.axeda.services.v2.ConfigurationItemimport com.axeda.services.v2.ConfigurationItemCriteriaimport com.axeda.services.v2.AssetConfigurationimport com.axeda.services.v2.Assetimport com.axeda.services.v2.ExecutionResultimport groovy.json.JsonSlurperimport net.sf.json.JSONObjectimport groovy.xml.MarkupBuilder/*** ConfigItem_CRU.groovy* -----------------------** Reads in json from an http post request and reads, adds, deletes or updates Configuration Items.*** @note this parses a post and does not take any additional parameters.* * @author sara streeter <sstreeter@axeda.com>*/def contentType = "application/json"final def serviceName = "Con

  Happy New Year, everyone! New year, same mission. As we continue to improve ThingWorx, we remain committed to taking into account what you, our users, are saying. What are you using ThingWorx for? What do you want it to do? What additional tools are you looking for?   To hear from you directly, our PM team has created a quick survey to understand your identity management and SaaS strategies a little better.   Complete the survey below for a chance to win a free Solution Central t-shirt! Loading…   Thanks in advance! At the end of the survey, all respondents will receive a link to check out the latest in our ThingWorx 8.5 release. One lucky winner will receive the Solution Central t-shirt.   Thanks for sharing your info! We’ll be sure to study it as we continue to develop our robust IoT solutions platform.   Stay connected in the New Year! Kaya

Good evening and Happy New Year!   I launched version 2.3.0 of the GitBackup Extension.  The release is available here https://github.com/vrosu/thingworx-gitbackup-extension/releases/tag/V2.3.0   It adds the capability to push commits using User specific Committer Name and Email. This is an optional feature, which allows multiple developers to push commits under their own credentials. The documentation was updated with more details about this.   This release certifies the Extension to work for ThingWorx 8.5.x. (Previous ThingWorx versions have not been tested and the documentation was updated accordingly).    As always, this extension is not a PTC supported product, so in case you have issues with it, please do not open a PTC Tech Support ticket and instead use GitHub's issue system or the PTC Community.   Please feel free to fork and improve it.

  Whether you’re new to ThingWorx or you’re a seasoned user, understanding the Thing Model is key to accelerating your IoT development. Today, I’ll dive into what ThingShapes, ThingTemplates and Things are and how to use them to accelerate development.   Before I dive into the definitions of these concepts, let’s first consider the wide array of machines that exist out there in world. The variety is huge—there’s MRI machines, 3D printers, laser cutters, CNC machines, tractors, and so much more.   At their core, all MRI machines share similar properties and capabilities—they have a name, a physical location, a magnetic strength, a radio frequency current, and the ability to visually display what’s going on inside the human body. There are, however, different types of MRI machines, and, while they are fundamentally the same type of machine, there are notable differences as well. When creating our IoT app, it’s important that we have a way to model these differences so tha

Remote Monitoring of Assets Benchmark   As @ttielebein introduced previously, one of the missions of the IOT Enterprise Deployment Center (EDC) is to publish benchmarks that showcase the ThingWorx Platform deployed to solve real-world IOT business problems.    Our goal is that these benchmarks can be used as a reference or baseline for architects working on their own implementations... showing not only a successful at-scale implementation, but also what happens when that same implementation is pushed to ...or even past... it's limits.   Please find the first installment attached - a reference benchmark demonstrating ThingWorx deployed to monitor 15,000 assets with a high-volume of data properties per asset.  Over 250 hours of simulations were conducted as part of producing this benchmark.   The IOT EDC team will be monitoring this post (as well as our other posts in the IOT Tech Tips forum) to answer any questions we can about the approaches taken in

In this post I show how to use Federation in ThingWorx to execute services on a different ThingWorx platform instance. In the use case below I set up one ThingWorx instance in the Factory and another instance in the Cloud, whereby the latter is executing a service which is actually running on the former.   Please find the document in attachment.   HTH, Alessio Marchetti  

  Hello, everyone!   With the release of ThingWorx 8.5, we’ve incorporated a lot of new functionality into our manufacturing and service apps. To cover a few, I’ve included the list below. We created a manufacturing common layer extension to bundle all the PTC-offered IoT apps (Operator Advisor, Asset Advisor, Production KPIs and Controls Advisor) into one extension to enable you to use them even more quickly. We added a UI to Operator Advisor to strengthen your development of work instructions. We introduced new shift and crew data models and user interfaces to standardize how to track workers’ shifts and crew availability. We also introduced Flexible KPIs to help you more rapidly develop apps to calculate common metrics. We enhanced the Operator Advisor MPMLink connector to allow users to access navigation criteria for filtering parameters based on required criteria with support for standard processes. We incorporated multiple context supports for assets—like different bu

Recently a customer from the ThingWorx Academic Program sent in a sample program they were having problems with. They were trying to post data from a Raspberry PI using Python to their ThingWorx server. It turns out that their program did work just fine and was also a great example of posting data from a PI using REST.Here is how to set up this example.1. Import the attached "Things_TempAndHumidityThing.xml" entity file.2. from the PI run 'sudo pip install requests'3. from the PI run 'sudo pip install logging'4. from the PI run 'sudo pip install http_client'5. Create a python file call test.py that contains this example code:#!/usr/bin/pythonimport requestsimport jsonimport loggingimport sys# These two lines enable debugging at httplib level (requests->urllib3->http.client)# You will see the REQUEST, including HEADERS and DATA, and RESPONSE with HEADERS but without DATA.# The only thing missing will be the response.body which is not logged.try:    import http.clien

The intend of this post. This post is for the user who want to validate that, the ThingWorx Analytics Services related to Confidence Models work successfully. Underneath video walk through the steps to validate the Services via a non-supported PTC Mashup. The intend of this video is uniquely to validate that, Services related to Confidence Models works successfully.  What package files are used in the video? The Mashup entities and dataset used in the video, is attached to this post. Feel free to download the files and test on your machine. Why use Confidence Models? A confidence model is a way of adding confidence interval information to a predictive model. Statistically, for a given prediction, a confidence model provides an interval with upper and lower bounds, within which it is confident, up to a certain level, that the actual value occurs. During predictive scoring, this measure of confidence provides additional information about the accuracy of the prediction. More informat

 Image Source: https://www.thefire.org/resources/spotlight/     Designed a super cool mashup? Have an innovative IoT app? Are you really proud of how you solved an IoT challenge? Are you using ThingWorx for a unique use case?   If so, we want to hear from you! I’m looking for a few ThingWorx developers that are interested in sharing their work to be showcased on the Ask Kaya blog! (Don’t worry—we can hide your confidential info and only share what you allow us to.) We’d love to highlight what our developers are doing with ThingWorx out in the real world. If you’re interested, comment below or message me directly!   As always, stay connected.  

Developing Great IoT Solutions Brought to you once again by your EDC team, find attached here a brand-new, comprehensive overview of ThingWorx best practices! This guide was crafted by combining all available feedback, from support cases to PTC Community threads, and tapping all internal resources. Let this guide serve to bridge the knowledge gaps ThingWorx developers most commonly see.    The Developing Great IoT Solutions (DGIS) Guide is a great way to inform both business and technically minded folks about the capabilities of the ThingWorx Platform. Learn how to design good solutions from a high-level, an overview designed specifically with the business audience in mind. Or, learn how to implement good IoT designs through a series of technical examples. Start from very little knowledge of the Platform and end up understanding data structures and aggregation, how to use the collection widget, and how to build a fully functional rules engine for sending and acknowledging al

Events   Timers and Schedulers both come with a specific Event inherited from the Thing Template: Timer ScheduledEvent Both have a Data Shape allowing to capture the timestamp of when the Event was actually fired. Events in ThingWorx are triggered when a specific condition is met. In this context the condition is met and the Event is fired when a Timer has expired or a Scheduler's time is reached. Once an Event is triggered, Subscriptions will take care of executing custom Services to react to the Event. Subscriptions   Subscriptions listen to Events and can be used to react to certain Events with running custom Service scripts. To follow-up on Timers and Schedulers, a new Subscription must be created, listening to any related Event fired. Add a new Subscription to the Thing with       As the Subscription is usually listening to the Thing that it is configured on, the Source has to be left empty. When listening to other Entities' Subscriptions the corre

This demo walks through how Range Count works. The Range Count service calculates the difference between the maximum and minimum value.  Agenda of the demo: 1. Create a demo Thing 2. Add a new property to the Thing 3. Add the property statistical calculation type Range Count to the Thing 4. Validate the statistical calculation service via the added calculation type Range Count 5. Validate the statistical calculation service via the Service QueryTimedValuesForProperty      

Embedded databases come with the installation of the ThingWorx PlatformNo additional installation or configuration is required for embedded databasesRead about the various benefits and pitfalls of embedded versus external belowDatabase OptionsH2RDBMS (relational database management system), written in JavaHas a small memory footprintEmbedded into ThingWorx for easy installationNot as robust as other database optionsNot scalable in production environments (unless used alongside a separate, external database for stream, value stream, and other data) ​See KCS Article CS243975 for further reading on the use of external databasesMeant to be used for quick deployments and testing environmentsPostgreSQLORDBMS (object-relational database management system), written in CPostgreSQL is the ThingWorx recommended database for production systemsMore RobustExternal database installed separately from ThingWorxBeneficial because external databases can be specifically configured for use in production, w

    We’re back with a ThingWorx 8.5 highlight! Today, we’ll cover brand-new functionality within ThingWorx Flow—the Azure Connector!   Imagine you’re on the regal shores of ThingWorx, trying to reach the plentiful utopia of Azure IoT services and capabilities. How do you get there? Through the new Azure Connector for ThingWorx Flow!   The Azure Connector for ThingWorx Flow is an OOTB connector that enables you to leverage the power and breadth of Azure services directly in ThingWorx applications with ThingWorx Flow. If you have intermittent needs for high-scale processing, for example, the Azure connector can help optimize costs based on when you require a mighty powerful liege and where you only pay for the necessary processing capacity when it is important. Azure Functions are also useful when you want to leverage some special code that was written in a language like Python that you’d like to easily leverage, such as to pre-process information collected from a de

In case it's useful for anyone, I successfully used the Thingworx Importer to import an Entity using version 8.4.1. The import command was in a CURL script (can also be run using e.g. Cygwin on Windows) and the entity data was contained in an XML file. The XML file is attached to this post, and the CURL script is copied into the bottom of the post body.   Notes on using the script: Copy CURL code into import.sh You might need to change the line endings to UNIX, e.g. in Notepad++ menu option Edit > EOL Conversion > Unix Give permissions to run import.sh (chmod +x import.sh) ./import.sh >>>>>>>>>>>> #!/bin/bashAPPKEY="2e6704c0-XXXX-XXXX-XXXX-a1589e387d1a"TWX_HTTP_PORT="8018"FILE_PATH_TWX="Things_testImport.xml"PROTOCOL="http://"IP="localhost"URL="$PROTOCOL""$IP"":""$TWX_HTTP_PORT""/Thingworx/Importer?purpose=import"curl -X POST -H 'appKey: '$APPKEY \-H 'Content-Type: multipart/form-data' \-H 'Accept: application/json' \-H 'x-thingworx

Requirements: 6.1.2+Geofences are geometric shapes drawn virtually on a geographical area that represents a fence that can be crossed by a device.  The Axeda Platform has built-in support for mobile locations and geofences, which can be linked to the rules engine to enable notifications based on geofence crossing.What this tutorial coversThis tutorial demonstrates the workflow of creating a geofence through to creating the expression rules with notifications, then how the mobile location can trigger the rules.1) Creating the Geofence2) Creating the Expression RuleThere is currently no user interface built into the Axeda Applications Console which interacts with geofences.  For a sample application with a geofence user interface, see Sample Project: Traxeda​ (TODO).  For a single Custom Object that includes all of the functionality described below, see the end of  this document.The properties of a geofence are a name, a description, and a series of coordinates based