In this article, you are going to learn about how to retrieve data from Sentilo, thanks to the Sentilo gateway.
What is Sentilo?
Sentilo is a software abstraction layer (client-subscriber architecture) that allows public administrations and enterprises to create applications, that consume data from IoT devices, without having to integrate with every hardware IoT device.
Usually, a public administration implements Sentilo in his software stack, and inserts all IoT devices in Sentilo, so that the IoT device information can be consumed by N systems.
It communicates with the Platform through HTTP.
How to add a Sentilo in the Platform
To start receiving data from Sentilo you just have to follow the next steps:
1. Log in to the Platform with your user and password.
2. Go to the Settings section:
3. On the left menu select Gateways and click on Register a new gateway:
4. Select the gateway Sentilo:
5. Fill in the following fields:
- Name: Write a distinctive name for your Sentilo
- API URL: Write here the URL of your Sentilo API (provided by the Sentilo administrator of the public administration or corporation)
- Token: Add the token needed to access properly your Sentilo Gateway (provided by the Sentilo administrator of the public administration or corporation)
- Provider: Define the Provider name. (Related to the devices to be read, the Provider is the hardware vendor name registered in this Sentilo deployment)
- Time Zone: Select the time zone where your gateway is located
6. In the registration form you can check connection against the Sentilo deployment to make sure you have proper connectivity.
7. Once registered, and connected, you can add devices retrieved from the Sentilo platform. Every single data series in Sentilo will have to be mapped to a single device & parameter in the Platform.
In the following screenshot you can see the mapping in the gateway form, performed by the user:
8. When adding a new device, the user will do the mapping thanks to 3 fields:
- Column "Sensor(units)": Selects the Sentilo data serie, thanks to a dropdown menu of available dataseries detected. Each data serie will be mapped as a new single device and parameter in the Platform.
- Column "Formula": The user have to write the text "VAR" as placeholder for the data coming from Sentilo, and in this field is allowed to define a formula to scale/offset the value given with a mathematical formula (not possible to combine with other parameters).
- Column "Parameter(units)": The user maps the Sentilo data to a parameter of the EMS.
The form will let the user know the connection status of each data series thanks to the status colour of the status of the arrow icon at the right side of the mapping row.
9. You're done. Now you have created a Sentilo gateway with N new data series (devices in the Platform). As soon as the gateway receives new data you'll see the new devices created in the devices tab of the gateway.
Sending data to Sentilo
You've learned how to register and configure a gateway to retrieve data from Sentilo. In order to send data to Sentilo (the other way around) you have to install the Sentilo App and configure it properly (please follow this article).