Say you’re monitoring Industrial IoT sensors on Tools.Valarm.net, and you’ve got quite a healthy amount of measurements to give you an idea of the rates of changes for your sensors, like water flow meters.

How can you automatically calculate running rate averages for your IoT devices?

Calculating rates and averages are common Industrial IoT applications that you’ll learn about in this How-To Tutorial guide. Perhaps you’ve got some “big data“, or large, gigantic, or awesome sensor data you need to get a better handle on. There are a wide variety of calculators available for you to use with your sensor measurements, and we’ll go into step-by-step detail on how to configure your running rate average calculators below.

Let’s get started with your first step – log in to your account on Tools.Valarm.net.

Click Device Manager to go to your page where you manage your Valarm IoT devices and sensors.

Next, click the name of your device you’d like to configure with a calculator for running rate average.

Now you’re viewing your device details page with rows and columns of your sensor measurements. Mouse over the orange configure data path button and click the Other Calculators option.

You’ll see a window with all of your configured calculators. If this is your 1st IoT calculator algorithm you’re setting up then you’ll only see this 1 for now.

Use the drop down menu to select your calculator type. In this demo we’ll be going over the Rate calculator that uses statistical analytics to average your sensor measurement rates using recent sensor data uploads to Valarm Tools Cloud.

Type in a name for the calculator then click the blue + / plus button to create your very own rate calculator.

Next up you’ll configure your running average rate calculator. Type in notes on what you’ve made this calculator for.

In this demo we’re calculating a rate of rain fall / precipitation according to a tipping bucket sensor connected to a Knob counter sensor from Shop.Valarm.net.

Select your Output Channel from the drop down menu. In this example we’re outputting the running average rate calculations to the User 05 column.

Input Channel 1 is the source of your incoming sensor data that you’d like to use in your IoT analytics and rate calculations. In this demo example, we’ve selected DAQ Res 1, the 1st channel of resistance on a knob counter sensor that’s connected to RG2 Hobo Onset tipping bucket sensor hardware. We’ll be automatically calculating a running average rate of rain fall with Tools.Valarm.net software.

Your Calculation Variable 1 is the number of historical sensor measurements that you’d like to include in your average calculations. Note that your current, incoming sensor reading counts as one of these. This function accesses only specially cached data, and the cache is currently limited to 5 entries. So any value here that’s bigger than 6 will be silently clamped.

Your Calculation Variable 2 is the maximum age of any previous data, in Seconds. If the first previous reading is older than this age of time, then the rate returned by this calculator will be 0. If at any point there is a subsequent sensor reading is older than this time, then this averaging calculator will stop accumulating at that point. Default values for this is 600 seconds, a.k.a., 10 minutes. You’ll configure this to the time value that makes most sense for your remote monitoring systems.

Last, Calculation Variable 3 is a multiplier you can use to output your rate in your desired custom units. Your rates are internally calculated in milliseconds by default. Your resulting rates will be multiplied by any number you put here. For example, to convert your output rate to seconds, input 1000. In minutes: 60,000. In hours: 360,000. You may enter ‘1’, ‘0’, or leave this field blank to calculate rates in millis. Remember that your output calculations will be saved to your Output Channel you’ve chosen above.

Click the green save button and that it’s, you’re all done!

Now you’ll see your calculator results all around Tools.Valarm.net. In the screenshots you’ll see the output we chose, User 05, in tabular data views, as well as maps and graphs.

You’ve got lots of other IoT sensor calculators ready to rock and roll for you on Tools.Valarm.net. Try them out in the list you saw above. Or take a gander below for a glimpse of what’s available for you:

Since Tools.Valarm.net is an open software platform, you can use sensors made by just about any hardware manufacturer, like Flowline, Clair Air AQ, Senix, and Geokon.

 

Questions?

Your IoT sensor calculators were designed, coded, and integrated as a response to requests by customers, just like you. We enjoy hearing about our customers‘ needs and helping out in any way we can.

We’ll apply our experiences and knowledge to help you deploy your most effective remote monitoring systems.

How will you, your teams, and your organization improve your business operations and effectiveness while saving your time and your money? Take a gander at our web dashboards to learn more about what your organization gains with remote monitoring systems.

Please don’t hesitate to Get In Touch With Us at Info@Valarm.net if you’ve got any questions.