IoT & Connectivity Tips

Previous blogs Widget Extensions Introduction Widget Extensions Click Event This blog we will take a quick look at making a new Date Picker Widget I'm not going to worry about styles just the basics of getting the widget defined and able to place in the Composer canvas. As in previous blogs we have to decide on a name, we will use DatePicker Because we don't want to write all of the logic that has been written many times will use a jquery datepicker https://jqueryui.com/datepicker/ which has a lot options. The simple syntax is $(#myDate).datepicker() which will do most of the work. The $ is the jquery reference an the  #myDate is the id where the datapicker will render and the datepicker is the function worker. Before we get into the renderHtml I realize I need to quickly talk about the widgetProperties function in the ide.js. This where we set what properties can be defined and whether they are dynamic. For example the thought it useful to have a Title , Date and some simple css style configurable options. Inside the widgetProprties we have properties section (json) and the basic  pattern is PropertyName baseType defaultValue isBindingTarget Setting the isBindTarget to true allows for dynamic setting in the composer. Below is the complete definition for the widgetProperties Next we set up the design time (ide)  renderhtml And finally we define the  runtime renderHtml which looks like this Deploy it and you have a basic Data Picker. There is more work to do on this to provide better styling but  its a start!

Put together a quick example mashup in support of a couple of analytics projects to demonstrate use of the new TWX Analytics 8.1 APIs within TWX mashup builder. The intention here is for use in POCs to provide a quick way of demonstrating customer-facing analytics outputs along with the more detailed view available in Analytics Builder. Required pre-requisites are: ThingWorx 8.1 + Analytics Extensions ThingWorx Analytics Server 8.1 Carousel TWX UI widget (attached) imported into TWX Data set(s) loaded with signals / profiles generated. The demo can be installed by importing the attached entities file into TWX composer then launching the mashup 'EMEA.Analytics.CustomerInsightMashUp'. A quick run through of the functionality ... On launching the mashup, data sets and models are displayed for selection on the left hand-side. On selecting dataset and model, signals are presented in two tabs - first an overview of all signals. The list on the left can be expanded by changing the value for 'Top <n> Contributing Features'. On selecting a signal from the list, the 'Selected Signal Details' tab displays additional charting for value ranges, average goal etc. The number of 'bins' to display can be edited. Similarly, profiles can be viewed from the 'Profiles' tab - each profile can be selected by dragging the upper carousel. This is all done using the Analytics 8.1 "Things" in TWX along with an additional custom Thing with some scripted services (EMEA.Analytics.Helper). Thanks to Arian Van Huelsen & Tanveer Saifee at PTC for their support; all comments / feedback welcome.

Presentation for MFG Apps Tips & Tricks Session #3 - PTC IoT Starter Kit, Presented by Serge Romano 1DEC2017

As many already know, ThingWorx versions 8.0+ now support both Apache Tomcat versions 8.0.44+ and versions of 8.5.13+. For this reason, many will want to consider using the latest Apache version for their ThingWorx instance, even despite the fact that the installation documentation does not seem to provide examples for the 8.5.x versions. This is because much of the configuration between the two versions remains the same. One may question these similarities when looking at the updated documentation from Apache on configuring SSL Connector ports. It would seem like some of the more traditional elements are now unusable, since they are marked for deprecation (including keystoreFile, keystorePass, and clientAuth). However, for now, these elements are still usable because Tomcat will convert whatever is provided in the Connector tag to the brand new SSLHostConfig tag (used primarily by Tomcat going forward). Apache has noted that these configuration options will continue to be usable throughout the next few major versions of Tomcat. PTC is already working on documentation which helps utilize the new configuration options in the future, but it won't be available for some time. In the meantime, for step-by-step instructions and further reading, see our Knowledgebase Article using self-signed certs (this article uses a CA). Happy developing!

Preface   In this blog post, we will discuss how to Start and Stop ThingWorx Analytics, as well as some other useful triaging/troubleshooting commands. This applies to all flavors of the native Linux installation of the Application.   In order to perform these steps, you will have to have sudo or ROOT access on the host machine; as you will have to execute a shell script and be able to view the outputs.   The example screenshots below were taken on a virtual CentOS 7 Server with a GUI as ROOT user.     Checking ThingWorx Analytics Server Application Status   1. Change directory to the installation destination of the ThingWorx Analytics (TWA) Application. In the screenshot below, the application is installed to the /opt/ThingWorxAnalyticsServer directory   2. In the install directory, there are a series of folders and files. You can use the ​ls​ command to see a list of files and folders in the installation directory.     a. You will need to go navigate one more level down into the ./ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin​ ​directory by using command ​cd ./bin​     b. As you can see above, we used the ​pwd​ command to verify that we are in the correct directory.   3. In the ./ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin directory, there should be three shell files: configure-apirouter.sh, configure-user.sh, and twas.sh     a. To run a status check of the application, use the command ./twas.sh status           i. This will provide a list of outputs, and a few warning messages. This is normal, see screenshot below:      b. You will have a series of services, which will have a green active (running) or red not active (stopped).           i. List of services: twas-results-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Results Microservice twas-data-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Data Microservice twas-analytics-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Analytics Microservice twas-profiling-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Profiling Microservice twas-clustering-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Clustering Microservice twas-prediction-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - PredictionMicroservice twas-training-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Training Microservice twas-validation-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Validation Microservice twas-apirouter.service - ThingWorx Analytics - API Router twas-edge-ms.service - ThingWorx Analytics - Edge Microservice   Starting and Stopping ThingWorx Analytics   If you encounter any errors or stopped services in the above, a good solution would be to restart the TWA Server application.   There are two methods to restart the application, one being the restart ​command, the other would be using the stop​ and ​start​ commands.   Method 1 - Restart Command:   1. In the same ./ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin​ ​directory, run the following command: ./twas.sh restart     a. The output of a successful restart will look like the following: 2. The restart should only take a few seconds to complete   Method 2 - Stop / Start Commands:   1. In the same ./ThingWorxAnalyticsServer/bin​ ​directory, run the following command: ./twas.sh stop 2. After the application stops, run the following command: ./twas.sh start   Note: You can confirm the status of the TWA Server application by following the steps in the "Checking ThingWorx Analytics Server Application Status" section above.

Mapping previous versions of ThingWorx Analytics API to ThingWorx Analytics 8.1 Services Since ThingWorx Analytics 8.1, the classic server monolith has been replaced by a series of independent microservices. This new structure groups services around specific elements of functionality (data, training, results). Thus the use of the previous API commands to access ThingWorx Analytics functions has been replaced by the use of ThingWorx Services. Those Services exist within specific Microservice Things accessible in the ThingWorx Platform 8.1. The table below shows a mapping of the most common previous API commands from version 8.0 and previous versions to the version 8.1 related services. The table below does not contain an exhaustive listing either of API commands nor of Services. The API commands used below are samples which might require further information like headers and Body once used. These are used in the table below for reference purposes. Previous API Command Purpose Sample Syntax TWA 8.1 Service Analytics Thing related to Service Service description 1 Version Info GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/about/versioninfo VersionInfo This service is available in each Mircorservice Thing inheriting from Analytics Server Returns the internal version number for a specific microservice. The first two digits = ThingWorx Core version. The next three digits = version of the microservice. 2 Registering new Dataset POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/ CreateDataset Data Microservice Creates the dataset uploads the data along with its metadata and optimizes it automatically. 3 Checking Dataset Status GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name> ListCreatedDatasets Data Microservice This old functionality is replaced by a Service that lists all the created Datasets 4 Creating Metadata POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/configuration CreateDataset Data Microservice (Check line 2 for further information) 5 Checking Dataset Configuration GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/configuration GetDatasetSchema Data Microservice Retrieves the metadata from a dataset. 6 Loading Dataset CSV POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/data CreateDataset Data Microservice (Check line 2 for further information) 7 Checking Job Status GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/status/<Job ID> GetJobStatus Available in all created Microservices inheriting from AnalyticsJob Server Retrieves the status of a specific job 8 Signals Job POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/signals CreateJob Signals Microservice Create a job to identify signals 9 Signal Results Job GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/signals/<Job ID>/results RetrieveResult Signals Microservice Retrieve a result of a Signals job 10 Profile Job POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/profiles CreateJob Profiling Microservice Creates a job to generate profiles. 11 Profile Result Job GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/profiles/<Job ID>/results RetrieveResult Profiling Micorservice Retrieve the results of a profiles job. 12 Train Model Job POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/prediction CreateJob Training Micorservice Create a prediction model job. 13 Train Model Result Job GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/prediction/<Job ID>/results RetrieveModel Training Microservice Only retrieves the PMML model. But if a holdout for validation was specified in the CreateJob, a validation job is auto-created and runs. 14 Scoring Job POST: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/predictive_scores BatchScore Prediction Microservice Submit Predictive Scoring Job 15 Scoring Job Result GET: http://<IP Address>:8080/1.0/datasets/<DataSet Name>/predictive_scores/<Job ID>/results RetrieveResult Prediction Microservice Retrieve results from prediction scoring jobs

      Thingworx extensions are a great place to explore UI ideas and get that special feature you want.   Here is a quick primer on Widgets (Note: there is comprehensive documentation here which explores the complete development process ).The intention is not to explain every detail but just the most important points to get you started. I will explore more in additional posts. I also like images rather than lost of words to read. I have attached the simple Hello Word example as a start point and  I'm using Visual Code as my editor of choice.   The attached zip when unzipped will contain a folder called ui and metadata xml file. Within the ui folder there needs to be a folder that has the same name as the widget name. In this case its helloworld.   Metadata file - The 3 callouts are the most import. Package version: is the current version and each time a change is made the value needs to be updated. name: a unique name used through out the widget definition UIResources: The source locations for the widget definition. The UIResources files are used to define the widget in the ide (Composer) and runtime (Mashup). These 2 environments ide and runtime have matching pairs of css (cascading style sheets)  and a js (javascript) files.   The js files are where most of the work is done. There a number of functions used inside the javascript file but just to get things going we will focus on the renderHtml function. This is the function that will generate the HTML to be inserted in the widget location.   renderHtml(helloWorld.ide.js) In this very simple case the renderHtml in the runtime is the same as in the ide renderHtml (helloWorld.runtime.js)   Hopefully you can see that the HTML is pretty easy just some div and span tags with some code to get the Property called Salutation.   So we have the very basics and we are not worried to much about all the other things not mentioned. So to get the simple extension into Thingworx we use the Import -> Extensions menu option. The UI and metadata.xml file needs to be zipped up (as per attachment).  Below is a animated gif that shows how to import and use the widget   Very Quick Steps to import and use in mashup. Video Link : 2147   The next blog will explore functions and allow a user to click the label and display a random message. This will show how to use events   Widget Extensions Click Event

Dive back into the mashup builder and learn about advanced widgets and layout options.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Introduction to the mashup builder, mashup types, widget and how to add services to a mashup as well as connecting data from the services to widgets and how to use events in mashups.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

An introduction to Java SDK, Java SDK and Eclipse, VirtualThing and ConnectedThingClient classes, how to establish communication, and additional features of the SDK.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Introduction to the ThingWorx Composer and a demonstration of how you go about building out the design plan.   For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Key Functional Highlights Patching & Upgrades Supports upgrading from 8.0.1 using the Manufacturing Apps Installer    Streamlined patch support for customer issues Updated the installer technology to align with ThingWorx platform   App Improvements Fixed bugs with acknowledging alerts Added support for collecting feature data from National Instruments InsightCM product   Controls Advisor Added ability to retrieve KEPServerEX connection information in case the connection is lost or deleted Minor UI improvements   Asset Advisor Updated the UI for anomaly status   Production Advisor Improved the status history widget to align with Asset Advisor Added synchronized zooming to the chart widgets     Compatibility ThingWorx 8.1.0 KEPServerEX 6.2, 6.3 KEPServerEX V6.1 and older as well as different OPC Servers (with Kepware OPC aggregator) Support upgrade from 8.0.1     Documentation ThingWorx Manufacturing Apps Get Started     Download ThingWorx Manufacturing Apps Freemium portal PTC Smart Connected Applications

This has been moved to its new home in the Augmented Reality Category in the PTC Community.

Presentation associated with the November 10, 2107 Tips & Tricks Webinar.

Presentation associated with Recording of the Friday, November 17, 2017 ThingWorx Manufacturing Tips & Tricks Web Session. Agenda: - Overview & Application Demo - Aron Semle - Architecture Overview - Varathan Ranganathan - Q&A

Recording of the Friday, November 17, 2017 ThingWorx Manufacturing Tips & Tricks Web Session. Agenda: - Overview & Application Demo - Aron Semle - Architecture Overview - Varathan Ranganathan - Q&A

Starting in ThingWorx 8.0, Application keys are now encrypted and stored in the database. The Key used to encrypt the Application key id value is stored in /ThingworxStorage/Keystore.jks and the password for the keystore is stored in /ThingworxPlatform/keystore-password. These files are created automatically by ThingWorx and unique to that instance. ThingWorx 8.1 In addition to the handling application key decryption, the Instance device ID is also stored in keystore.jks. To properly configure an HA landscape using ThingWorx 8.1, consider either; In a dark Site scenario, copying the license_capability_response.bin from the primary lead server to the ThingworxPlatform folder of all slave instances In a connected scenario, removing or renaming the existing capability response on the slave servers after replacing the keystore.jks and password-keystore to automatically retrieve a new capability response based on the encrypted device ID Failure to do so will result in a Host ID mismatch error [message: Trusted storage hostid does not match system hostid.]

This has been moved to its new home in the Augmented Reality Category in the PTC Community.

Overview of prerequisites and components required to achieve a successful installation PTC Navigate View ALM App and a brief functionality demonstration of the product.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

An Introduction and Overview of Navigate View PLM Apps/Widgets for Navigate users for Windchill PDMLink.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.

Configuring Navigate search using Common Tailoring and configuring access permission on apps from role perspective.     For full-sized viewing, click on the YouTube link in the player controls.   Visit the Online Success Guide to access our Expert Session videos at any time as well as additional information about ThingWorx training and services.