There are times when the raw sensor readings are not directly useful for monitoring conditions on a machine. The raw data may need to be transformed before it can provide value within your monitoring applications. For example, instead of monitoring individual pressure readings reported each second, you may only be concerned with the maximum pressure reading each minute. Or, maybe you want to monitor the median value of the electrical current pulled by a machine every five seconds to smooth out the noise of raw sub-second sensor readings. Or, maybe you want to monitor if the average hourly temperature of a machine exceeds a control limit in 2 of the past 3 hours.
Let’s take the example of monitoring the max pressure of a valve reading over the past 45 seconds for your performance dashboard. How do you do it? Today, you might add a new property (e.g. “MaxPressure”) to your valve Thing. Then, you might add a subscription that triggers when the Pressure property value changes, and then call a service FindMax() to return the maximum pressure for that time interval. Lastly, you might write that maximum result value to the new property MaxPressure to store it and visualize it in the dashboard. Admittedly, not the worst process, but also not the most efficient.
Coming in 8.4, we will now offer Property Transforms, which enable you to automatically execute common statistical calculations—like min, max, average, median, mode and standard deviation, as well as SPC calculations—directly within a property itself. These transforms are configurable to run at certain intervals of time or points collected and can also be used with our alerting subsystem to drive behavior and user action where necessary. There is no longer a need to create an elaborate subscription-based logic flow just to do simple calculations! This is just another way that ThingWorx 8.4 offers a more productive environment for IoT developers than ever before.
Ready to see it in action? Check out this video below by our product manager Mark!
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Stay connected,
Kaya
