This article is designed to explain all the settings an admin would use when interacting with the L2L Machine Connect site. By the end of this article the administrator should be confident in how to configure their site, devices, dataset and rules for their specific needs.
This article is not intended for operators and non-technical staff.
Settings Walkthrough-
Setting up Assets-
Assets are the name of the machine the Sensorbot is installed on. Below is the form for creating a new asset.
Name: This has to be unique. This is where you would put the name of the machine the bot is installed on
Group: This is used to group assets together. Currently this is only used in the interactive drill down report.
Downtime Entry Threshold: used to determine how long an asset is in the downtime state before they are allowed to enter a downtime entry. Downtime events shorter than this time will not be used in downtime history because downtime events shorter than this time are treated as a "microstoppage", short intervals of time where the machine is not producing parts. In the timeline report any downtime events shorter than this threshold will show up as blue in the timeline. events longer than this time show up as red in the same timeline.
Production Unit: This is used to give the pieces produced on an asset a name. i.e. 1 part
Hourly Target: a baseline of how many parts should be produced by the machine in an hour. This is the grey line in the production display and the OEE reports.
OEE Benchmark Target %: Used when a machine can not operate at 100%. For example, a machine is capable to produce 100 parts per hour. For a reason your facility can only get 60 parts per hour on the machine max. This setting could be used to make all the reports use 60 parts per hour or 60% as their 100% target. Basically this setting is used to boost the reports to make a machine seem like its doing great.
OEE Real-Time Target %: This is a percentage of the benchmark target.
Part Count: used to determine if the parts being logged into the system are automatic from sensor bots or if its just dependent on user entry.(typically set to automatic)
Rejects: used to determine if the rejects being logged into the system are automatic from sensor bots or if its just dependent on user entry.(typically set to manual)
Hourly Target: used to determine if hourly targets are static or if they're dynamic and being pushed into the Connect tables through external integration.(typically set to manual)
OEE Speed/Performance Framework:
None - disregard target quantity only use availability for OEE
Fixed Hourly Target - utilizes Hourly target for OEE reports
Scheduled Hourly Target - Get Hourly target from API data
Total Microstoppage Time - Disregard completely
Rolling 30 Day Hourly Target - used to calculate an average of hourly targets.
ERP Asset Name: used to tie asset data to ERP data
ERP Asset Description: used for more description if needed. Info in here not used by Connect.
Add Asset to all scheduled shifts: used to control whether a new asset will be automatically added to the shift schedules.
Add Asset to all downtime reason codes: used to control whether a new asset will be automatically associated with all the reason codes currently in the system.
Automatically initialize "One to One" data flow: leave this on to allow downtime reason codes to properly be associated with an asset. There is no reason this cant stay on no matter what is done with a device.
Gateways - Edge:
Gateways connect to both the internet and the sensorbots. This device is the link from machine data to cloud data.
This is the main gateway page. Here we can tell what gateways are online, how many bots each gateway has, statistics about the gateways, and status history.
We can search for a particular gateway with this search bar.
The bell icon will bring up a prompt to add an email to get notifications about they gateway you have selected.
The circular arrows starts a discovery function. This function automatically finds sensorbots in range of the system and adds the MAC addresses to the system. Great function for up to about 75 bots for the system. Its recommended to add manually for more bots than that
The plus icon is where we can start the process to add a gateway to the system. NOTE: adding a gateway here does not automatically bring the gateway online. There is still some setup to do on a gateway device to actually bring it online.
The "i" icon will bring up a window that shows statistic information and packet timeline and mesh network graph.
The trash icon will remove a gateway from a system only if there are no sensorbots assigned to the gateway.
This is the window that pops up when the info icon is clicked. The first window is stats on the gateway.
This is the next tab in the same window. This shows the amount of packets the gateway is processing in blue and the amount of packets lost in green.
This window shows us gateways and sensorbots and their connections. (WIP)
Back on the main screen, this is where we find info like how many bots are assigned to a gateway and what the load is coming from the bots assigned.
The plus icon will provide is a text box to add notes to a gateway.
The clock icon with the arrow show us an event history for the gateway. notes entered will show here as well as gateway faults.
This is the gateway history. Events for a gateway will show up here.
Sensorbots - All bots screen:
Shown here is the Sensorbot screen. This will show total bots, initializing, healthy, unhealthy, offline, or hidden bots filtered when you click on one of the boxes. There is also a search bar that works for searching by asset name, deviceId, or MAC address.
The blue plus icon will allow you to manually add a Sensorbots MAC address if the bot isn't found automatically on discovery.
The lock icon allows/denies any changes to a bots configuration.
The asset column is where a bot gets assigned to an asset.
The gateway column is where a gateway gets assigned to a bot.
The serial number column is the MAC address of the Sensorbot.
The version column is where the firmware version running on the bot gets displayed.
The uptime column shows how long the bot has been sending messages to the gateway.
The communication column shows us how long a message between a bot and its gateway takes to process.
The status column shows what the bot is doing. all green is bot sending machine data. anything less means the bot is trying to get itself set to send messages.
The pen icon brings up the input configuration screen.
The circular arrow resets a bot.
The eye icon will hide a bot except in the hidden filter and remove the asset and gateway assignments.
The trash icon will remove the bots MAC address from the system.
Sensorbots - Configuration screen:
This is the configuration screen for a Sensorbot.
The i icon brings up a roundtrip time history.
The plus icon allows notes to be entered into the system for the specific bot being configured.
The clock with the ccw arrow brings up a history for the device. similar to gateway history. showing notes, events, and errors.
Now lets go over data streams. There are 8 places provided to configure the inputs provided to a bot. Each of these "data streams" can be configured for any of the inputs. In other words input 1 does not have to be configured in data stream 1.
When a datastream is not configured this screen will be the first thing that appears. First enable the data stream.
After a datastream is enabled this is the screen that is presented.
Input Pin: This is where the actual input is selected.
Display name: This is where the input gets its name. This is a variable and will be what is shown in the flows area.
Sampling Logic: This is where we chose how to measure the input.
Periodic Measurement will provide a value based on voltage or amperage averaged based on later settings. Great for getting a running/down signal from a machine or amp clamp signal.
Count Events will provide a count of times the signal presented to the input changed by the event threshold(Publish threshold changes to event threshold when counting events). Great for getting count values.
Resolution: used for setting measurement rate and number of measurements by standard values or select custom to make up a sampling rate that works for you.
Measurement Rate: number value of how often to take a measurement.
Measurement Rate Unit: the unit value to assign to the measurement value.
Number of Measurements: how many measurements to take before processing and sending the data.
Publish Threshold(Periodic Measurement): limit that the resulting data has to change by before its pushed to the cloud.
Event Threshold(Count Events): Limit the signal has to cross, above or below limit, before its counted.
Processing(Periodic Measurement): Chose between averaging the measurements taken, pushing the minimum value in the number of measurements, or maximum value in the set.
Count Logic(Count Events): select from above event threshold or below event threshold to consider the input a count.
When finished click save. The bot will take some time to reconfigure and update everything on the backend. Be patient the process is not fast.
The input shown was configured to count parts. This is just one datastream. It will show a history of the signal only when viewing the page. This shows no parts counted since the screen loaded.
This input was configured for Periodic measurement. This shows a history of less than 1Vdc since the page loaded. This temperature value would take further calibration in the flows to properly show the correct temp value based on the value of the input signal.
The expand button will show the history chart with timestamps. When viewing the expanded history the raw toggle at the top changes how the value of the signal is presented. turning on the raw values toggle will show some value between 0 and about 32,000(about 24vdc). Great for understanding the values provided to the system to properly configure inputs down the data line.
Shifts:
One big thing to note about shifts. This is a very important step to include any shift for a site. This allows a setting of a timezone for the site. This is necessary when using the Connect platform with the L2L platform as timing can be off by hours for things like part counts if a timezone isn't set on Connect.
Shown here is the form to make up a new shift.
Name: Give a name to the new shift.
From/To: Total period of time for this shift.
Timezone: Sets the timezone for the shift. If this is the only shift on record the whole site will use this timezone. This is necessary when sending data to L2L from Connect. When no timezone is set then data can be off by hours on L2L.
Shift Group: Shift groups allow shift variations for different assets.
Assets: Select all the assets this shift should pertain to.
Days: select the days this shift is active for.
Breaks: Allows periods of time to consider not production time. Morning meetings, lunches, ect.
Users:
This is where new users can be added to the site. Fill out the form and click add user. This same form will show when editing a users information but populated with the users information.
Display: Real-time Walkthrough
Display: Downtime Walkthrough
Now that you've reviewed Machine Connect Settings, please continue your learning journey by heading to the Machine Connect - Step-By-Step Configuration Guide to learn more.