- How long has your asset (e.g., pump, vacuum, or generator) been running?
- Since when was the freezer temperature above 0C/32F?
- Has your asset been operating for a critical number of hours over the last month?
- Time to run the recommended maintenance routine?
- How much time passed while that switch was flipped on?
These are some critical remote monitoring and Industrial IoT questions. You can easily answer these with the Time at Threshold Totalizer feature in Valarm Tools Cloud. In this blog post you’ll see how to set this up for your remote monitoring equipment. You can get the total time a sensor value has been greater than, less than, or equal to your desired value. This is super useful for monitoring remote assets in real-time so you can be aware of things like how long has…
- Your asset (e.g., commercial equipment, engine, wet or dry vacuum, snow plow lift, industrial cleaning equipment, generator, chemical cleaner, switch, even anything on a vehicle, truck, trailer) been turned on or turned off
- A remote environment been in your desired (or undesired) condition, e.g., temperature, humidity, air quality
- Any sensor been in the state that you do, or don’t, want
Let’s go through the steps to set up a Totalizer for Time at Threshold on Tools.Valarm.net. We’ll set the totalizer up to count how much time the remote environment has been above freezing, 32F / 0C. Perhaps you’re remotely monitoring equipment, medical assets like vaccines, or a freezer. It’s critical for cold chain monitoring to know exactly how long the remote environment’s temperature and/or humidity has been above, below, or equal to your desired threshold.
We’ll use a Valarm compatible sensor hub and a Yoctopuce Meteo sensor to remotely monitor temperature, humidity, and pressure. If you want to monitor switches or things like how long an asset has been turned on or off, use a Knob sensor.
The Knob is a powerful sensor since it has 5 channels for monitoring electrical resistance, switches, potentiometers, and buttons. You can use the Time at Threshold feature to monitor how much time a wide variety of factors have been active or inactive. You’ve got a lot of possibilities using raw sensors and sensor adapters for standards like 4-20mA, 0-10V, and PWM (pulse width modulation). Have a look at Valarm compatible sensors for a better idea of how you can monitor anything, anywhere.
To set up your Time at Threshold totalizer, first login to Tools.Valarm.net. Next go to the Device Manager and click the name of your device you’d like to configure. You’ll end up at a screen that looks similar to the one on the right where you’ve got all of your Valarm device details. On this screen you can also configure APIs like JSON and see a tabular view of all your time-stamped, geo-tagged sensor data. Now that you’re on the device details page of Valarm Tools Cloud, click the totalizers button you see inside the red oval in the screenshot.
The Configure Totalizing Calculators dialog box will pop up where you can configure up to 8 totalizers. First, select the Time at Threshold type using the dropdown menu. If you’re curious, the Tracking type of totalizer is a generic counter for counting things like the number of ticks / pulses / spins from a water flow meter. See this step-by-step tutorial on how to set up that type of totalizer. Also have a look at how it’s used in the field for remotely monitoring water flow meters for:
- Upstream oil & gas industry in Pennsylvania
- Local government, natural resources department, agriculture & aquaculture in Nebraska
- Water usage at golf courses in Southern California
- Web dashboards for effective water resources management
Note: You can combine these 2 types totalizers to know things like just how much time has passed since X number of gallons were pumped from water wells.
Configure your Time at Threshold totalizer to your liking. The latest time elapsed data is up top, still at 0 in this screenshot. Check the box to enable your totalizer then type in a name and any notes. Choose the sensor you’d like to use for your input channel, in this example we’re using ambient temperature. Then select your threshold comparator:
- Greater Than, a.k.a. >
- Greater Than or Equal To, a.k.a. >=
- Less Than, a.k.a. <
- Less Than or Equal To, a.k.a. <=
- Equals Exactly, a.k.a. ==
Then enter your threshold value that you’re comparing against to set up a trigger. For example, one that will start counting time when temperature >= 0. Select an Output Channel where the total amount of time elapsed under your conditions will be saved in milliseconds. You can use 1 of Valarm Tools Cloud’s calculated or user fields. Click save and you’re ready to go!
You can start using your time at threshold totalizer now that it’s been saved. Here’s an example Valarm GSM sensor hub with a Meteo sensor (temperature, humidity, pressure) and GPS / GNSS sensor. Valarm Tools Cloud will now count the amount of time that the temperature meets the threshold comparator criteria you set up, e.g., temperature > 0 degrees. Let’s go back to your Device Details page on tools.valarm.net to see temporal data in the output channel / field that you chose.
In the Time at Threshold totalizer window you’ll now see the current time period of how many days, hours, minutes, and seconds the condition you set has been true.
The amount of time in milliseconds will be updated each time your remote monitoring device sends an update to Valarm Tools Cloud. In this case we’re saving the time elapsed data to the Calc 1 column / field.
This time at threshold totalizer data is available everywhere throughout Valarm Tools Cloud like in maps, graphs, and in your endpoints and business intelligence / analysis systems via our APIs.
The time at threshold totalizer / counter is a useful feature for a variety of industries, like industrial cleaning companies, that need to know just how long assets have been in specific states. You can remotely monitor all sorts of things like how long assets like vacuums, motors, pumps, and generators have been in use, up or down, switched on or off, and in a wanted or unwanted environmental condition.
Quite useful for industrial cleaning companies that provide chemical cleaning services since this helps those businesses effectively improve processes. Especially when used with vehicles, trucks, trailers, and other mobile industrial equipment with mobile GSM sensor hubs, GPS/GNSS sensors, and any other sensor like 4-20mA, temperature, and thousands of others!
We understand customer needs for Industrial IoT and Internet of Things sensor devices.
We’re available to help you choose, configure, deploy, and train you and your teams for your remote monitoring, telemetry, and Industrial IoT sensor solutions.
Questions?
Please don’t hesitate to Contact Us at Info@Valarm.net if you’ve got any questions.
Have a look at our Customer Stories Page and our Web Dashboards Page to see more on how Tools.Valarm.net is used all over the world in a variety of industries like:
