The PI Configuration feature of Assetwise Amulet comes in 2 forms, a widget and an administration page. At no point do either of these features communicate directly with the PI interface.
PI Widget
This widget provides a read only summary of the PI Tag to Point ID mappings and the related settings/configuration. It is accessible in widget format so that it can be added to dashboards allowing multiple users the ability to browse mappings quickly, whilst not being able to modify them.
The grid itself can be sorted, filtered and there is a scroll bar at the bottom to reveal many of the fields not visible at first, but importantly, keeping the PointID and PI Tag on screen at all times.
Exporting to CSV – clicking the icon to the top right of the widget will present the contents of the grid in CSV format, allowing all mappings to be used in Excel if necessary.
Customisation
| Value | Default | Comment |
|---|---|---|
| Widget Heading | PI Tag Summary | Enter the name of the widget as it is to appear in the heading. |
| Decimal Places | 1 | The number of numeric digits to appear after the decimal place in any number. |
| Refresh Period | 0 | Select a refresh period from the drop down menu, from between 15 sec to 1 hr, or no refresh at all. |
Properties
There are no properties in relation to this widget.
If the user has permission, there will be a button at the top right above the grid – 'PI Configuration'. This button will take the user to the administration page which is discussed further in the section to follow.
PI Configuration – Admin Feature
The second of the 2 forms is the area where a user can create, edit and delete mappings. This is done via 3 main controls on the page, a tree, a form and a grid.
Creating a New Mapping
In order to create a new mapping, users must complete the form at the top of the page...
A PI Tag is required be entered in the first text box, this is a textual string value and is mandatory.
The PointID textbox is another of the mandatory fields, the PointID must match a point in Amulet, and it can only be mapped to one PI Tag. As shown in the images above, if the user browses the navigation tree there is the option to drag and drop PointID's into the 'Point ID' textbox making configuration that little bit easier.
The type of data drop-down has 3 options:
- Interpolated – When Amulet requests data from PI it is normally in evenly spaced (sampled) time tag intervals typically on most systems every 5 or 15 minutes. This is one of the standard methods available in PI to view data when the frequency of the underlying data is unknown. This is the default option used with the Bentley PI SDK applications and will output 'Evenly Spaced Data Values'. – specified in the 'PI Data Frequency' setting for this mapping.
- Archived – This uses the inbuilt PI data method archived values – which means all the raw data available will be transferred. This option would only be used if the underlying data is made up of relatively slow discrete data – for example sampling data which maybe occurs 2 or 3 times a day.
- Snapshot – This uses the inbuilt PI data method Snapshot value – and only returns the single latest value stored by PI.
The Enabled checkbox will always be checked by default, if this is un-checked the mapping will be created
The PI Data Frequency can be any positive number greater than 0 and designates the span in minutes for the time span between the interpolated values. The default is 15 minutes.
The Collection Frequency setting is used to let the application know how often to connect to the PI server to get new data for transfer to Amulet. The setting measured and stored in minutes and can be any positive number. The default is 60 minutes.
Read Or Write – A column in the grid, set to Read or Write. It defines whether we are reading from PI or writing back to it. The default is Read.
Thus if the defaults of the 2 settings above are used, the Bentley PI SDK server application will request data from PI every 60 minutes and receive 4 values at 15 min time intervals.
The final field to be completed is Comments. This is a free text field for the user to enter any comments relating to this mapping.
Upon clicking Create Mapping the mapping will be saved if all validation rules are satisfied. Otherwise users will be directed towards the fields that require attention before saving. Upon successfully creating a mapping it will be added to the grid beneath the form.
'Reset Values' will clear the form contents and replace with the default entries. Nothing will be committed or saved.
Editing Existing Mappings
All existing mappings can be modified or deleted using the grid shown below.
In order to modify a cell simply double click within it, this will then allow the user to either type, select from a dropdown, check a box or select from a calendar. Not all cells are editable and so a list of the cells that cannot be modified is shown below.
- Last Value – taken from Standard Data (the last value stored against that point)
- Timetag – the date and time of which the last value was recorded.
- Units – the measurement units used for this point.
- Days Since Last Data - a useful column to show quickly whether the PI IIoT IS is experiencing issues.
Exporting to CSV – clicking the button to the top right of the grid will present the contents of the grid in CSV format, allowing all mappings to be used in Excel if necessary.
Deleting a Mapping
The last column of the grid shown above will contain a delete icon for each row.
When clicked this icon will alert the user to their action, checking one last time that they wish to perform this action before going ahead. Once confirmed the mapping will be removed from the database and any associated ingestion service will stop for that PointID/PI Tag.