Bridging the gap between raw IoT data and insightful information: Ellenex Data Transformation

Dominic Yeoh

Jul 25, 2024

2 min read

Bridging the gap between raw IoT data and insightful information: Ellenex Data Transformation

IIoT device sensors report or perform various functions when deployed, primarily focusing on collecting and processing environmental data to generate actionable insights. These IoT sensors are versatile, being able to monitor a wide range of metrics such as temperature, conductivity, air pressure, and fluid level.

When your IoT devices are deployed, the data they collect is processed into insights through a layered architecture that includes perception, transport, processing, and application layers. But some information may not be necessary to see, even times, completely unimportant!

For example, some NB-IoT devices return something called a node status, the sample response below displays the data processed and sent within this status.

Network: Forged-UDP, Seq: Foo1395
{
	"ag": 3,
	"ao": 0,
	"ccid": "Foo",
	"cimi": "Bar105",
	"csq": 31,
	"dd": 10,
	"gmr": "FooA08M1GA",
	"gsn": "Bar45232",
	"ip": "Foo192.168.0.1",
	"it": 1,
	"rr": 4000,
	"rsrp": -xx,
	"rsrq": -xx,
	"rssi": -xx,
	"sc": 4a,
	"si": 1b,
	"sm": 1c,
	"st": 2d,
	"to": 0f,
	"ts": Foo29,
	"tt": Bar2,
	"tz": Foo44,
	"ver": "BarAA",
	"wu": Foo0
}

Looking through the returned body, an overwhelming amount of data being passed here isn't meaningful to the user besides maybe RSSI, RSRP and RSRQ. But although unimportant, they are still necessary pieces of information required for the device to operate properly behind the scenes without the users involvement and awareness.

Node status's aren't the only bits of data sent by IoT devices, other response bodies sent by IoT sensors include raw information such as pressure level, device status, name, id, water level and volume just to name a few. Receiving this raw information is great for the user, but how can we make them more meaningful / insightful? to us they're just numbers on a screen.

Bridging the gap between data and information: The Ellenex way

Fortunately we have graphs and visualisations to help our users get more insights to their raw data! This allows us to provide more meaning to sequences of raw information than text ever could; resulting in easier comparisons, data visualisations, and forecasts. An example image below shows the comparison between the lowest and highest point of recorded data as well as visual readings for signal strength and battery charge level!

Ellenex also provides a way to detect certain levels of sensory measurement values and tie them to an alert level threshold through the use of alert creations. These can be used and set by the user to define custom thresholds for their devices, further giving meaning to device sensory readings by applying either a critical, warning, or ok status to each returned measurement.