Whether you’re monitoring water systems, air quality, flood warning systems, hydro machinery, or anything else, there may come a time when you’d like to export your IoT sensor data to an online file repository for business analytics + intelligence, backups, or other purposes.

Using your Tools.Valarm.net Export Jobs features, you can automatically upload and send your Industrial IoT sensor measurements to various endpoints at regular, custom intervals chosen by you. You can export to various destinations like Google Drive, Dropbox, Amazon AWS S3, Microsoft OneDrive, and FTP (File Transfer Protocol) Servers.

In this HowTo article we’ll cover the details, step-by-step, on how to configure Valarm Tools Cloud Export Jobs with your FTP servers. If you’d like to learn more about other exports like Google Drive and Dropbox, then have a look at our blog, videos, and other tutorials.

First up, you’ll log in to your Tools.Valarm.net account and go to your Device Manager page.

Verify that you know for which of your IoT devices you’d like to export data. And be sure you’ve set up custom column names and alias fields for your sensor values as described in this tutorial. You’ll choose your custom field names for labeling your columns in your sensor export file.

In your Device Manager you’ll notice a button labeled Export Jobs. Click that button, the Export Jobs button, to go to your Export Jobs page.

You’ll see a list of all of your Export Jobs once you arrive to your export jobs page.

In the screenshot you’ll see we’ve set up other Export Jobs for Google, Dropbox, and Microsoft.

Click the green button in the upper right to make your new Export Job for exporting your IoT sensor measurements to FTP.

After you click to create a new Export Job, you’ll see the window for configuring and customizing your IoT sensor export job.

Let’s go over the general configuration for setting up an FTP export job. Note that that for any set up option, you can click the Question Marks [?] to learn more about the settings and get the help you need. And you can always send us a message at Info@Valarm.net if you need anything else.

At the top of the configuration, under Basics, you’ll type in a Name for your Export Job and Notes. Use these fields to describe what your export job is for so that you and other members of your teams at your organization can quickly remember why you made this Export Job.

Next up is your Data Generation section.

Your Schedule options let you choose how often you’d like your Export Jobs to happen. Or perhaps you want to run your Export Jobs Manually. The Manual option is what I recommend you do initially until you feel familiar with this software feature and have confirmed that all of your configuration settings are working just the way you like it. Once you’re comfortable with your Export Jobs and settings, you can choose regular time intervals for exports, like once a day at midnight UTC.

Choose which Time Zone you’d like to use for time stamping each of your IoT sensor data measurements.

If you’re running your export job in Manual mode, then you’ll use the calendars to select a From and to Date Range for which you’d like use as the time range for your data export. All sensor measurements on Tools.Valarm.net that fall between these 2 dates you pick will be included in your export file.

Under Source Type, you’ll start off with a Single Device.

For which of your IoT devices do you want to export data? Select and choose the device that will be the Source of your FTP Export Job.

Pick your favorite File Output Format. You can choose options like CSV, JSON, and SHEF. If you’d like to see additional options then don’t hesitate to send us a message Info@Valarm.net and we’ll see what we can do for you.

With your Output Columns setting, you’ll pick which custom alias fields you’d like to use for labeling your sensor data export file. If you haven’t already done this, follow this tutorial guide to set up custom field names that you’d like to use for your device.

You can perform Threshold Filtering if you want to filter out sensor measurements where your device reported a value you’d like to exclude from your exports. For example, you can use tools to compare sensor reports to a constant value, e.g., temperature greater than 90, or humidity less than 40%. If you’d like to do this then click Enable and configure your filter.

Last up under Data Generation is Sort Order. Here you’ll decide whether you want your data to be ordered in ascending or descending order based on time stamp.

In the next section, Output / Destination, we’ll configure our FTP server settings.

For your Storage Service, choose FTP in the drop down menu.

Type in your FTP Host Address and Port. Use the format myftpserver.mydomain.com:21 and note the : colon in between your domain name and port number.

Write in your username and password for your account you’d like to use to log in to your FTP server.

If you’d like your sensor data file to be compressed, you can choose a Compression type like .Zip or .Gz.

In the Folder / Dir you’ll type in the folder on your FTP server where you want to save your IoT sensor data exported by Tools.Valarm.net.

You can choose the Filename Format that makes the most sense for you, your teams, and your organization. You can set up automatic file names using variables like time stamps or choose Fixed Static File Name and type in the exact file name you’d like to use. In the example demo screenshot you can see we set up a Static/Fixed Filename and our export sensor data file will be named YourValarmFTPExport.csv.

Now Save your configuration and you’ll see your FTP Export Job in the list of your Export Jobs.

Click Run Now to make sure that all of your configuration settings are up to par.

After you click Run, you can refresh your Export Jobs page and see the latest Status info on your Export alert.

If everything went OK according to your plans, then you’ll find your IoT sensor data file has been uploaded and saved to your FTP server in the folder you specified above.

In the screenshot you can see that we exported our IoT CSV file to our FTP server and downloaded it using the Cyberduck FTP client.

You can also see in the screenshots that we’ve opened our CSV export file and confirmed that it was successful and our sensor data file is everything we wanted it to be.

That’s your general overview of your options. You now know more about how you can set up your configurations for your Valarm Tools Cloud Export Jobs, specifically for exporting to an FTP server.

And remember that you can click the Question Marks [?] next to any setting on Tools.Valarm.net in order to get more info and help with any specific configuration settings.

On our blog you’ll find more tutorials and videos for all of your software features available on Tools.Valarm.net, including IoT export jobs for Google Drive, Amazon AWS, Dropbox, Microsoft OneDrive, and Google Sheets.

Thank you for reading.

If you’ve got any questions about monitoring systems and Industrial IoT sensors, then please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me at Info@Valarm.net