Guide to IoT Datalogging
This guide gives a brief overview of the considerations and how-tos in terms of connecting sensor systems to The Cloud.
We have all been there, having to venture out on-site and manually access and retrieve data from a sensor system. Worse still, we have arrived at the location where monitoring systems are installed, only to find no data! Was the loss of power the reason? Or perhaps the equipment has been removed?
Why not make all of this manual data retrieval a thing of the past? Becoming a proactive interpreter of data, rather than a reactive individual, has never been easier thanks to IoT datalogging.
Many sensor systems have a signal output. Signal outputs have been used for decades in order to transmit measured data from a sensor system to a 3rd party system. In the industrial world, the 3rd party system is very often a BMS or SCADA system. The outputs often used for this are analog 4-20mA or pulse signal outputs. Other signal outputs have come into existence as well, such as MODBUS, PROFIBUS, HART, SDI-12, and others.
Thanks to the Wildeye 4G datalogger, it is possible to connect sensor systems, be it existing or brand-new, to the cloud and to transmit the data to the cloud. The Wildeye can also feed data into other systems using an API (Application Programming Interface). The Wildeye achieves this by using a signal input that matches with a sensor-system signal output. For example, if a sensor can send a signal output to a 3rd party device via analog 4-20mA, a Wildeye with a 4-20mA input can connect to the sensor.
The Wildeye portal is an intuitive online space where data, which is transmitted from the datalogger to the cloud, can be viewed. Other information such as power consumption, battery life, or the status of the logger can be used. As standard, the upload frequency is set to every 15 minutes, however, it is possible to reduce this down to 1 minute.
RS Hydro regularly interface the Wildeye to a variety of sensor systems. Below is a list of products RS Hydro can support with Wildeye telemetry:
- Any Panametrics flowmeter or moisture/gas analyser system.
- Any Siemens electromagnetic flowmeter system.
- Various Teledyne ISCO flowmeter and auto-sample systems (SDI-12 or MODBUS required).
- Any Eureka Waterprobes system.
- Any Proteus Instruments system.
- Solinst Leveloggers and water level sensors (SDI-12 required).
- Any device which has a signal output from the list of accepted inputs within the Wildeye datasheet.