The Internet of Things on AWS – Official Blog

Collecting, organizing, monitoring, and analyzing industrial data at scale using AWS IoT SiteWise (Part 2)

Post by Asim Kumar Sasmal, Senior Data Architect in the IoT Global Specialty Practice of AWS Professional Services and Sourav Chakraborty, Senior Product Manager of AWS IoT SiteWise.

 

[Before reading this post, read Part 1 in the series.]

In Part 1 of this series, you learned how to model and ingest data from industrial sites in a secure, cost-effective, and reliable manner using AWS IoT SiteWise (in preview).

In Part 2 (this post), you learn how to:

  • Monitor key measurements and metrics of your assets and take necessary actions when required in near-real time using SiteWise Monitor, a new capability of AWS IoT SiteWise.

In Part 3, you learn how to:

About SiteWise Monitor

SiteWise Monitor is a new feature of AWS IoT SiteWise that provides managed web applications that you can use to view, monitor, and share operational data from your processes and equipment at scale. Access to the web portal is controlled through your enterprise identity by using AWS Single Sign-On (SSO). That means your domain experts, such as Process Engineers, can sign in to a SiteWise Monitor web application from a desktop or mobile browser without needing access to your AWS account. SiteWise Monitor helps users interactively view live and historical process and equipment data.

Solution Architecture

The following diagram illustrates the high-level end-to-end solution described in this multi-part post along with the AWS services used in the solution.

Walkthrough

There are two sections in this walk-through:

  • Setting up the Monitor Portal in AWS IoT SiteWise
  • Monitoring key measurements and metrics in near-real time

Prerequisites

Use the prerequisites from Part 1.

Setting up the Monitor Portal in AWS IoT SiteWise

In Part 1 of this multi-part series, you have modeled your industrial assets and started the data ingestion into AWS IoT SiteWise from the OPC-UA server (KEPServerEX). You can now setup a web application, called a portal, with SiteWise Monitor to visualize the key measurements and metrics in near-real time.

SiteWise Monitor provides three personas/roles within your organization – Portal administrator, Project owner, and Project viewer. An IT administrator in your organization creates portals and assigns Portal administrators and Portal users. Once a portal is created, a Portal administrator creates a Project with a collection of assets and dashboards, and assigns an owner to each project. A Project owner is an author who creates the visualization dashboards to represent your operational data and when ready, shares with the Project viewers.

To set up a portal to view your AWS IoT SiteWise data, perform the four steps below :

  1. Enable AWS SSO. This is an optional step if you already have AWS SSO setup, otherwise SiteWise Monitor will set it up and allow the IT administrator to create the first native user – all from within the AWS IoT SiteWise console.
  2. Configure and create a Portal with a name of your choice. For this post, akstest-sitewise-monitor is the portal name
  3. Add Portal administrators
  4. Add users and send an invitation email to Portal administrators

For more information, see Getting Started.

Following the above steps, you setup the portal and see the list of portals in the AWS IoT SiteWise Console as shown below:

Monitoring key measurements and metrics in near-real time

Once you setup your portal and are logged in as a Portal administrator, follow the steps below to create sample dashboards of your Wind Turbine data:

  1. In the navigation pane of AWS IoT SiteWise Console, choose Monitor, then Portals and then click on the URL link to get to the Portal and visualize your assets. 
  2. Expand the left pane of the Portal and click on Projects to choose either an existing project or create a new project. For this walk-through, click on Create project to create a new project named Monitor Wind Farm
  3. Scroll down to Project assets section of the portal and click on Go to asset library to add your Wind Turbine asset hierarchy named Wind Farm to the Monitor Wind Farm project.
  4. Click on Add asset to project, select your existing Monitor Wind Farm project, and click on Add asset to project.
  5. Click on Create dashboard and then click on Add assets to dashboard and Edit to author your dashboard.Provide a name to your dashboard as Wind Turbine 1 – PLC Unit 1 (East) and then expand the asset hierarchy on the right side to drag and drop Max Generated Power, Generated Power, Average Wind Speed, and Wind Speed for Wind Turbine 1 – PLC Unit 1 you wish to monitor. Choose the appropriate chart type from the options based on your requirement. Click on Done once done to finish your dashboard creation and visualize.
  6. Navigate to Projects, Wind Farm and share the project to your Project owners and Project viewers as required.

Summary

In Part 2 of this two-part series, you learned how to monitor key measurements and metrics of your assets and take necessary actions when required in near-real time using SiteWise Monitor, a new capability of AWS IoT SiteWise.

In Part 3, you will learn how to:

Hopefully, you have found this post informative and the solution helpful. As always, AWS welcomes feedback. Please submit comments or questions below.