iTwins and IoT — A Powerful Duo
Check out the code!
Over the last three years, the iTwin Platform has developed many solutions that integrate IoT data in digital twins. This includes some powerful projects including smart roadways and windfarms.
Most recently, we have distilled the knowledge from these experiences into a generic approach that can help anyone build their own (iTwin powered) IoT solution.
Using this approach, developers can build intelligent SaaS solutions for better maintenance and operations of infrastructure assets. We offer an end-to-end demo app that can be configured with any cloud provider (such as Azure and AWS). In this post, we will go over some of the capabilities of this approach, along with background on how to build your own.
Let’s start out with some features!
Visualization Techniques
IoT data is the oxygen for any digital twin…but in order to reap its full benefits, we need to monitor and visualize it. Here are the different ways this can be accomplished.
Representing Devices
It all starts with individual devices. When we bring real-time data into the iTwin, we need a way to represent the IoT devices that the data belongs to. This is where markers can help.
Our demo app comes with easily configurable markers that represent individual IoT devices. In the iTwin below, we can see smart devices — for temperature, occupancy, equipment, and security — represented by white markers.
The same devices can also be accessed from a list widget (on the right).
Tooltips
The markers come with helpful tooltips that show the live telemetry (IoT data) streaming in for each device. All we need to do is hover over a device marker to pop open the tooltip…
…and watch the data change.
Heatmaps
One of the more powerful ways to visualize IoT data is using heatmaps. Let’s say we want to monitor a particular device type, such as a temperature sensor. We can use the heatmap approach to visualize the live data from all temperature sensors at a glance.
Different colors represent different regions of value. In this case, we are using red to show the maximum temperature, green to show the minimum, with everything else in between. These colors and value ranges can be configured as needed.
The benefit of this approach is rapid access to data. For example, a facilities manager can quickly identify which rooms require cooling and take the appropriate steps.
Real-Time Charts
Another way to visualize IoT data is using real-time charts. We can embed data from different sensors into the same chart. This helps us present, monitor, and compare the latest telemetry data of various devices.
Multiple charts can be created to generate a powerful dashboard that represents the heartbeat of the IoT solution.
Bonus Features
As shown by our demo app, this generic approach is quite extensible. You can add even more custom widgets (in combination with the ones above). Plus, more IoT connections to enrich the solution with multiple data sources.
Once you have an (iTwin powered) IoT solution, your data can be visualized in Microsoft Power BI and Grafana dashboards. It can also be stored in data warehouses for analytics and predictions.
Next Steps
Now that you have seen the capabilities of this approach…in the next post, we will describe how you can hook it up to your own solution.
- To get started with your iTwin journey, check out the developer page at iTwin Platform.
- To get started with iTwins and IoT, check out this repository.
