Sensor's network

How it works

Sensor network

Observations and observation types

Observations are the kind of objects that are used by sensors, devices, pieces of software (things in general) to notify about state change, sensor's readings, etc. Like thing's instances, or any other object in our architecture, they have a type that defines its attributes. Usually we differentiate between an observation instance and an observation type but the former is usually called just observation.

An observation type, as any other type, is a JSON-LD that defines the attributes of an observation.

To be able to create an observation you need to first define its type. When you create a new observation type, you will find there are a number of core attributes that are present in all observations. In addition to those, like name and description, that you can find in any object, you will find:

(See Observations types)

topic: This is a String. It contains the destination path where this observation will be stored. We will explain later in this document the characteristics of a topic. Like paths in a filesystem you can specify a list of tokens separated by the character '/' to express an specific position in topic's tree. For instance, you can have /amtech as a topic but you can also express something more specific like /us/nevada/las_vegas/hotel_x/main_parking/parking_lot_1/movement_sensor as the topic of an observation generated by the movement sensor that is located in the parking lot 1 of the main parking of Hotel X in Las Vegas. A topic specification can have placeholders. Those will be explained later in this document. Example:

 {
   ...
   "topic": "/#{tenantId}/#{country_code}/#{city}",
   ...
 }

(See Topics)

producer: A String used to specify the producer of this observation.

location: If known, this is the location where this observation took place. It's expressed as a JSON String that contains a WKT specification. The structure of this JSON is explained in the Location's page.

ocurrence_time: This is the date and time an observation occurred. It's specified by the producer of the observation.

detection_time: This is the date and time an observation is detected in the system. The producer can specify it but it will always be overridden by our system.

       properties topic, producer, targetthings and proximityarea can be enriched with placeholders

targetthings

JSON String that specifies the things that are related in some way to an observation with the objectives of:

Defines a criterion in the Observer.
Parses it in a reasoner (javascript binding)
Associates thing's proximity area value to the proximity area assigned to the field proximityarea (see proximity updates).
Associates an observation sent as a command with the instance thing that consumes the observation to execute a command.

The value consist on a list of JSONs having

thingType: a thing type
thingsId: list of thing ids or thing names of the given type
proximityarea (optional): id for automatic enrichment of the thing's proximity area

The following example illustrates an observation type gpsGeolocation, that will be use in an observer to:

create a new thing type truck with id truck888 at the position specified in the observation
update the position of the thing id truck888 to the position specified by the observation

 
{
    "topic": "/amtech/#{country_code}/#{city}",
    //targetthings a thing type truck with id truck888
    "targetthings": "[{\"thingType\":\"/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/entity/truck\",\"thingsId\":[\"truck888\"]}]",
    "location": "{\"sContext\":\"geo\",\"wkt\":\"POINT(-99.16495264 19.41553490)\"}",
    "speed": 0,
    "@type": "/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/observation/gpsGeolocation",
    "creationDate": "2016-03-25T11:30:53.135Z",
    "guesttenants": [],
    "description": "Simulates a gpsGeolocation inside a customer area",
    "producer": "888",
    "detectiontime": "2015-11-02T23:51:29.000Z",
    "longitude": -99.16495264,
    "@id": "/amtech/things/observations/gpsGeolocationInCustomer",
    "occurrencetime": "2015-11-02T23:51:29.000Z",
    "latitude": 19.4155349,
    "accuracy": 0,
    "altitudeAccuracy": 0,
    "heading": 0
}

Topics

A topic is a UTF-8 string, which is used by the broker to filter messages for each connected client. A topic consists of one or more topic levels. Each topic level is separated by a forward slash (topic level separator).

   /sensor_network/observation_errors/graiEPC

In contrast to a message queue a topic is very lightweight. There is no need for a client to create the desired topic before publishing or subscribing to it, because a broker accepts any valid topic without any prior initialization.

Each topic maintains the observation types (semantic) that have been sent to it. (See Observations and observation types)
There is a RESTful API to send and get observations type (See Observation instances)
Observations from topics can be asynchronously consumed through Websockets (See Asynchronous Observation instances)
By default and unless configured otherwise, the observations are maintained for 1 hour
Each observation is served to a user once per topic, assuming the user has the access permissions to access it

Topics are automatically discovered when observations get into the sensor's network. It means that they are automatically created if they don't exist and the user sending the observation has the right to do it. When an observation is about to be inserted into a topic, two different things may happen:

The destination topic already exist. This is the simplest case and for the observation to be delivered, the user sending it must meet one of these requirements:
- His active tenant at the moment of sending the observation matches the tenant of the destination topic.
- His active tenant at the moment of sending the observation must be in the collection of guesttenants for the destination topic.
- The destination topic must include the special member _ALL in the guesttenants collection.

In any other case the operation is forbidden.

The destination topic doesn't exist. In this case the destination topic is created only if the user sending the observation has the right to do it. Because the destination topic may consist of one or more hierarchical levels, where each topic level is separated by a forward slash, we analyze the existence of each level starting by the one in the top (the root of the hierarchy). Then we analyze one by one each descendant until we get to the final destination topic. For instance, if the destination topic is /sensor_network/observation_errors/graiEPC then we analyze the topics existence in the following order:
/sensor_network

/sensor_network/observation_errors

/sensor_network/observation_errors/graiEPC

For each one of these topics we do the following:

If the topic exists we skip it.
If the topic doesn't exist and it's the root topic we can freely create it.
If the topic doesn't exist and it's not the root topic then the active tenant of the user sending the observation must match the tenant of the parent topic.

Each time a topic is created it will be assigned the user and tenant of the user sending the observation.

Remarks: If the topic cannot be created then the operation of sending the observation is rejected.

Ownership

Root topics are always created by a Creator and he owns them
topics are published with Activity publication
follower get access control to root services by subscribing to services
Root can not have #{placeholder}
new topic can be created in root topics with access by services
- topics and descendants are owned by the creator of the new topic

Observation Enrichment

The enrichment of observations is a group of actions and/or replacements that take place over an observation in the process of delivering it to its final destination or topic. They are placeholder substitutions, geolocation substitutions, and proximity updates.

Placeholders substitution

A placeholder is a string with format #{placeholder_name} than can be used in certain fields of an observation where the placeholders substitution takes place. Actually there are three fields where this kind of substitution is considered:

topic
producer
targetthings

Some substitutions occur in the process of building the observation in applications in the edge like the M2M Bridge and others occur after the observation is sent to the AMTech's platform. The latter are mostly geolocation fields substitutions which is a special kind of placeholder substitution.

For instance, these substitutions occur in the bridge:

#{tenantId}
#{userId}

For a full list of placeholders replaced at the edge see Intelligence at the Edge.

Geolocation substitution

This substitution provides values for placeholders used in several geolocation attributes based on the location field of an observation. Based on the WKT that is given in the location field, a process of reverse geolocation is run and the address is determined when possible. These fields are then replaced if they appear in the topic, producer or targetthings fields of the original observation JSON.

#{country} or #{country_code}
#{state} or #{province}
#{postcode} or #{postal code} or #{zip code}
#{city} or #{town}
#{suburb} or #{residential} or #{city_district} or #{municipality} or #{neighbourhood}

Proximity updates

A proximity update is executed when an observation arrives to the system containing information about proximity in its targetthings field. For instance:

 {
   ...
   "targetthings": "[{
                       \"thingType\": \"/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/entity/smartphone\", 
                       \"thingsId\": [\"main_phone_1\"],
                       \"proximityarea\": \"/some/uri/for/proximity/thing\"
                     }]",
   ...
 }

Using this information, the field proximityarea of the thing /amtech/things/entities/smartphone/main_phone_1 is updated with the given proximityarea in the observation. If the proximity update fails during the enrichment process, a notification is sent to the sensors_network topic but the enrichment process continues unless the notification of the error also fails.

CRUD observation

When a create (new), update, or delete operation is executed on a thing instance, and the type of the instance has been configured to send crud observations, an observation instance of type observationresourcecrud is sent to the configured topic (See Topics)

To configure a thing type to produce crud observations:

Include the observation type observationresourcecrud in the thing type observation production configuration.(See Thing types)
Include the thing type, with the observation observationresourcecrud, in the observation production configuration of an activity that the user is subscribed to (the user that will create/update/delete things and wants crud observations to be sent).(See Observation production configuration)

The following example illustrates a crudoperation PUT on a resource @id /amtech/things/observations/llrpAntennaInRoom5586417595299841, the proId changed from oldvalue false to newvalue true (See Observations and observation types)

    {
        "topic": "/thingsInBoardroom/ccAsync/",
        "_tenant": "amtechdemocreator",
        "targetthings": "[]",
        "@type": "/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/observation/observationresourcecrud",
        "propId": "sendSmoothingLost",
        "resourceuri": "/amtech/things/entities/LLRPAntenna/llrpAntennaInRoom",
        "resourcetype": "/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/entity/LLRPAntenna",
        "newvalue": "true",
        "guesttenants": [],
        "oldvalue": "false",
        "crudoperation": "PUT",
        "producer": "",
        "detectiontime": "Tue Apr 26 22:35:57 UTC 2016",
        "occurrencetime": "Tue Apr 26 22:35:56 UTC 2016",
        "@id": "/amtech/things/observations/llrpAntennaInRoom5586417595299841",
        "_user": "amtechdemocreator@amtech.mx"
    }

This observation allows reasoners to focus just on monitoring the changes to specific thing properties, independent of what originated the transformation of the Thing.

It supports the following placeholders

#{thingId}
#{tenantId}
#{userId}
#{typeId}
#{crudOperation}

Sensor network error

Occurs when there is an error in the process of delivering an observation to its destination topic. Usually occurs in the process of observation enrichment

topic "/sensor_network/"
- An observation type observationoutputmsg get send to the sensor network topic /sensor_network/observation_errors/[observationTypeName] in the following example is an observation type observationresourcecrud sent with a wrong topic value "message": "Failed registering topic for observation"

     {
        "topic": "/sensor_network/observation_errors/observationresourcecrud",
        "_tenant": "m2mcreator",
        "@type": "/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/observation/observationoutputmsg",
        "resource": "{\"topic\":\" /helloWorld/asynch\",\"_tenant\":\"m2mcreator\",
        \"targetthings\":\"[]\",
        \"@type\":\"/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/observation/observationresourcecrud\",
        \"propId\":\"hwgreetingLabel\",\"resourceuri\":\"/amtech/things/entities/HelloWorld/helloWorld\",
        \"resourcetype\":\"/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/entity/HelloWorld\",
        \"newvalue\":\"heyWithError\",\"guesttenants\":[],
        \"oldvalue\":\"hey\",\"crudoperation\":\"PUT\",
        \"producer\":\"helloWorld\",\"detectiontime\":\"2016-04-22T18:33:11.481Z\",
        \"@id\":\"/amtech/things/observations/helloWorld5226521372857087\",
        \"occurrencetime\":\"2016-04-22T18:33:10.948Z\",\"_user\":\"m2mcreator@amtech.mx\"}",
        "_name": "idbf740e7d83064ba492c9ca33d20617a0",
        "resourcetype": "/amtech/linkeddata/types/composite/observation/observationresourcecrud",
        "message": "Failed registering topic for observation",
        "guesttenants": [],
        "producer": "enrichment-topology",
        "detectiontime": "Fri Apr 22 18:33:11 UTC 2016",
        "@id": "/amtech/things/observations/6de7bf42-2ea6-4140-a8f4-a427bc119701",
        "success": false,
        "messagedetail": 
        "Error registering topic '/amtech/things/eventsources/ ': Resource /amtech/things/eventsources/  is not valid for its type definition. Property @idcannot contain blank spaces. ",
        "_user": "m2mcreator@amtech.mx"
    }

Simulator

The simulator is the page in the UI that allows the user to create observation instances to be used later to:

Debug activity observer execution. See activity observers
Debug a reasoner at the reasoner debugger sandbox or in the cloud. See debugging activity reasoners.

Once the observation instances are created, it will be possible for users with follower role to simulate them, this is to send them to the queue system as if they were generated by a thing in the IoT, by clicking on the Send button . Observations are actually sent to the sensor's network and you can see the result by consuming then from the corresponding topic. Note: Activity creators are not allowed to send observations. They can use this button to generate and setup (if needed) the topics configured in the observation instance.

Creating/Editing/Removing observation instance

Like every other resource, click on to create a new observation and select the observation type on the newly opened dialog. The following example illustrates creating an observation instance from gpsGeolocation. (See Observations and observation types)

Select observation type

Edit the observation fields as usual by ensuring to set the topic and producer fields which are required. In order to delete an observation, click on .

Simulate sending an Observation

Select the observation to be sent or navigate to one of them. Click on the Send observation button to open the dialog box where you can set

order to send the observations. Drag and drop the selected observation instances
Number of copies to be sent, per selected observations
Sequence, the message will be send in the selected sequence.
It happened now, the observation occurrence time property is set with current time.
- Send observation
Observations are actually sent to the sensor's network and you can see the result by consuming them from the corresponding topic.

Note: these observations will also trigger the currently deployed activities.

Sensor's network

Contents

How it works

Observations and observation types

targetthings

Topics

Observation Enrichment

Placeholders substitution

Geolocation substitution

Proximity updates

CRUD observation

Sensor network error

Simulator

Creating/Editing/Removing observation instance

Simulate sending an Observation

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