Things virtual models

Introduction

This article details the concept of things virtual models.

Concept

A physical thing or sensor is represented in Pilot Things by a: 

• product : selling name, description , vendor...etc..
• virtual model : product attributes and operations

A virtual model may be common to different products. In the product catalog , a virtual model has been pre associated for each product.

Hereunder an example of 2 products from ADEUNIS and ATIM companies sharing the same virtual model :

A model is composed of attributes (like temperature) and operations (like switch off a lamp). It also has an icon.

Each attribute has a :

• name
• predefined Pilot Things attribute types

The available types are listed in this article : Model attribute types

The operations are used to command the things.

Pilot Things includes Models for the products in the catalog. See article to know how to create your custom models.

Usage

The virtual models act as an abstraction layer for the physical things and thus the vendors. Your applications using Pilot Things IoT VPN API collect or command things regardless of connectivity technology and vendors.

Use case 1: Street Lighting

In that use case, a smart city would like to deploy smart LED lighting from 3 different vendors. 

The solution consists of creating a Pilot Things IoT VPN with the 3 vendor solutions. The model "StreetLight" with attributes like light power and operation like switch on/off will allow a third application to display and command the streetlights.

Use case 2: Smart building

In that use case a customer has 2 buildings with BACnet and Modbus temperature sensors. He would like to graph the temperature on a dashboard.

The solution is composed of a Pilot Things IoT VPN with 2 gateways and a model named "Temperature". Using Microsoft PowerBI, you just have to filter the sensors on the model Temperature. PowerBI will retrieves automatically all the temperature measures regardless of the connectivity (BACnet, Modbus)