Assets Management
Apio IoT allows you to create digital representations of any physical asset, from single sensors to whole plants. To do so, the platform provides a set of types you can leverage to model your domain.
In this document, we describe the main concepts around the Assets Management feature, for details about API endpoints, please refer to the API Documentation page.
Core entities
Project
The "Project" resource is the container of every other resource inside the project. When starting an Apio IoT project, you need to generate a project first.
Devices
Devices represents sensors, actuators and any other object which can be collect data from the field or receive commands from the cloud. Devices can be assigned to Plants and Nodes.
Assets
Assets represent objects which are more interesting to your domain, such as a production machine, a solar panel or a robotic arm, which will be connected to sensors and actuators.
Assets can have virtual properties, obtained by assigning its own properties to devices properties, for instance it is possible to have an asset representing a manufacturing machine and an energy meter which is measuring the machine's energy consumption: through property mappings it is possible to assign the energy property of the meter, to the consumption property of the asset.
Furthermore, assets can have parent entities, allowing to create complex hierarchies of assets.
Nodes
Nodes are network devices often used to collect data from multiple sensors (or to send data to multiple actuators). Devices can be assigned to nodes.
Plants
Plants are logical entites used to represent a physical colocation of assets, devices and nodes. Nodes, devices and assets can be assigned to plants.
Template entities
Devices, Assets and Nodes can be linked to Device Types, Asset Types and Node Types: template entities used to describe properties which are common to a group of objects. For instance, we can have the Asset Type "Electric Vehicle" and assign some state variables such as the Speed and the BatteryLevel.