Accelerate AWS IoT SiteWise insights with Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction

Edge2Web, an AWS partner, recently announced the general availability of Edge2Web Power Tools (EPT). This is a no-code, Software as a Service (SaaS) offering that helps to derive insights from industrial data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise. With EPT, organizations can better utilize AWS IoT SiteWise by allowing plant engineers, data analysts, and other non-technical users to create powerful and contextualized formulas, visualize data through intuitive scorecard and dashboard builders, and manage industrial assets without writing any code. This joint solution helps reduce equipment downtime, measure and improve product quality, and drive operational improvements across the board.

You can import and manage industrial assets and models. You can dynamically browse, visualize, and download any data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise. In addition, you can import dashboards created in the AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor portal to provide a unified view of your industrial data. EPT caters to four primary users: 1) plant engineers and power users who create KPIs, scorecards, and dashboards, 2) machine operators and managers who consume their outputs, 3) asset managers and data scientists that manage AWS IoT SiteWise metadata and perform ad-hoc analyses, and 4) EPT administrators that manage users, groups, and access policies.

EPT includes popular asset management applications from Edge2Web to import asset models and explore and update asset data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise. It also includes the AWS IoT Application Kit, which is an open-source visualization library for creating rich, interactive dashboards for operational asset and process monitoring.

In this blog post, we discuss the steps to acquire an EPT subscription from the AWS Marketplace, set up your EPT account, and securely connect EPT to your AWS IoT SiteWise tenant. We also share useful resources to help you get started using EPT to extract actionable insights from your industrial data in AWS IoT SiteWise, manage assets, build scorecards and dashboards, and use the integrated IoT Application Kit tools.

Figure 1 – Multi-asset scorecard created with the EPT Formula and Scorecard Builders

A no-code force multiplier for your digital strategy

AWS IoT SiteWise provides robust capabilities to model industrial data from equipment across facilities. These features enable you to collect metrics, visualize real-time data, and derive insights to optimize operations. However, extracting value from industrial data often requires technical expertise and specialized skills. EPT extends the AWS IoT SiteWise capabilities by providing a method for plant engineers, data analysts, and other non-technical users to maximize the value of their data. With EPT, plant engineers can import and manage AWS IoT SiteWise asset models. Data analysts can build powerful formulas, scorecards, and dashboards that are tailored for shop floor personnel. Data scientists can also browse and download AWS IoT SiteWise data for analysis in spreadsheets and business intelligence (BI) tools. In addition, EPT administrators can streamline user access by configuring groups and authorization policies to ensure that teams leverage data and applications that are aligned with their roles. EPT and AWS IoT SiteWise empower organizations to democratize industrial data insights, and rapidly deliver advanced visualizations and analytics to drive operational improvements.

With the EPT suite, you can:

• Manage AWS IoT SiteWise asset models and assets – EPT enables data engineers to quickly import industrial asset models and assets into AWS IoT SiteWise from plant historians and industrial asset management systems. Authorized users can view and update SiteWise asset metadata, browse and visualize timeseries asset data dynamically, and download datasets for use with spreadsheets and BI tools. Data scientists can create KPI formulas using the EPT Formula Builder, and then visualize or download those KPIs using the EPT Data Explorer.
• Build contextualized data formulas – The EPT Formula Builder helps data scientists, IT power users, and other industrial domain experts to create multi-level, multi-dimensional formulas that operate on data managed by AWS IoT SiteWise. Formulas can include popular math and data expressions that operate on AWS IoT SiteWise data attributes and timeseries. These formulas can include special operators to manage timeseries state data required by manufacturing KPI applications. The formulas can also embed other formulas so that it supports computational best practices of consistency and reuse.
• Build and run KPI scorecards – Power users can rapidly build and run high-performance scorecards that contextualize formulas created in the EPT Formula Builder. You can add saved scorecards to the Edge2Web application runtime menu. This can make the scorecards accessible to shop floor end users, who can then choose the assets and time periods needed to drive their scorecards. End users can also dynamically sort scorecards by selected variables to quickly identify targeted assets. For example, the users can sort in descending order of energy consumption to highlight assets with the highest usage footprints.
• Create powerful grid and spatial dashboards – Data analysts, process engineers, and other power users can create advanced, composite dashboards that include widgets, scorecards, and custom display components. EPT Dashboard Builder supports popular grid layouts and spatial layouts to display AWS IoT SiteWise data on factory floor plans and other background images. EPT dashboards can also include visualizations created in the AWS IoT Application Kit.
• Extend and integrate AWS IoT SiteWise platform services – Plant data engineers and analysts can use the embedded AWS IoT Application Kit to build rich interactive applications, for industrial asset monitoring and similar digital use cases, that leverage data from AWS IoT SiteWise. The AWS IoT Application Kit also allows authorized users to import and run dashboards created in SiteWise Monitor, enabling SiteWise Monitor dashboards to be managed and used outside of the AWS Management Console.

Subscription and set-up overview

To get started, visit the EPT listing, or search for EPT or Edge2Web in the AWS Marketplace. There are three key steps required to build the EPT solution:

1. Create an EPT subscription in the AWS Marketplace. EPT is licensed as a monthly subscription plan and is provided for free to the first three users per AWS account that sign into the solution every month. Edge2Web charges a small fee for each additional monthly user.
2. Follow the web form and email instructions to access and set-up your EPT account.
3. Configure and test your EPT-SiteWise connections. Then get started using EPT!

Prerequisites

To complete the EPT set-up process, you must sign into your AWS Account with permission to:

• Purchase solutions from the AWS Marketplace (although EPT includes a Free Tier, you must contract with Edge2Web to use the service via the Marketplace).
• Create an AWS CloudFormation stack using the CloudFormation template provided by Edge2Web. (We will discuss this template more later in the post.)

Getting started

To acquire an EPT account from Edge2Web, you must subscribe to the service in the AWS Marketplace.

Once subscribed, choose Set up your account (Figure 4), which will navigate to an account registration form. Complete the account registration form and you will receive an email with instructions to sign into the newly-created account (this process assumes that you are an EPT admin user). After providing a few AWS service settings, the wizard a CloudFormation template that will give EPT access to your AWS IoT SiteWise tenant. Once the CloudFormation template runs, the EPT installation process is complete. The complete process can be finished in about 30 minutes.

After completing the EPT installation, a team management page is available for you to setup user groups to help you manage access to the EPT Builder Tools and the embedded AWS IoT Application Kit builder. User groups can also control access to the built-in asset model and management applications. Authorized users can then import dashboards that were created in AWS SiteWise Monitor.

1. Navigate to the Edge2Web Power Tools for AWS IoT SiteWise listing in the AWS Marketplace

Find the listing for EPT (see Figure 2) using the Marketplace search tools. Review the information provided and then choose View Purchase Options.

Figure 2 – EPT listing overview in the AWS Marketplace

2. Create an EPT subscription in the AWS Marketplace

Review the ETP contract terms and choose Subscribe (Figure 3).

Figure 3 – EPT subscription purchase in the AWS Marketplace

You will receive a confirmation screen from the AWS Marketplace (Figure 4). Choose Set up your account.

Figure 4 – EPT subscription confirmation and account set-up link

Once you complete the short Edge2Web product registration form (Figure 5), you receive an email from Edge2Web Support that provides a link and a one-time temporary password to sign into your Edge2Web account. After signing into your account, reset your password.

Figure 5 – EPT account registration and confirmation

3. Configure and test your EPT-AWS IoT SiteWise connections and start using EPT

Sign into your Edge2Web Power Tools account and complete the steps outlined in the EPT Solution Set-up video.

Once you have configured your EPT account to access SiteWise, you are ready to set up users and groups, manage SiteWise asset models and assets, and create computations and visualizations using SiteWise data. EPT includes a Getting Started Guide (Figure 6) that helps admins and designers quickly learn how to use EPT to manage SiteWise data and deliver rich, contextualized insights to end users.

Figure 6 – EPT Getting Started Guide

You can work through the sections sequentially or skip to specific topics within the guide. The guide explains how to:

• Configure EPT users, groups, and permissions.
• Model and manage AWS IoT SiteWise assets.
• Build and run data computations and visualizations.
• Import, change, and run dashboards that are created using the AWS IoT SiteWise Monitor.
• Use EPT with the AWS IoT SiteWise Windfarm demo data.

Conclusion

Edge2Web Power Tools for AWS IoT SiteWise helps industrial organizations unlock the full potential of their operational data. By providing a comprehensive suite of no-code tools and applications, EPT supports data analysts, process engineers, and digital manufacturing leaders to rapidly derive actionable insights from data stored in AWS IoT SiteWise without needing technical or coding expertise. This application not only accelerates time-to-value, but also maximizes your return on investment when connecting your industrial assets to the cloud with AWS IoT SiteWise. To get started, visit the AWS Marketplace listing and follow the steps in this blog.

For more information about EPT, visit the Edge2Web website.

Additional EPT resources:

Managing AWS IoT SiteWise Assets using Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction to the EPT Formula Builder using Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction to the EPT Scorecard Builder using Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction to the EPT Dashboard Builder using Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction to EPT Team Manager using Edge2Web Power Tools

Introduction to the AWS IoT Application Kit using Edge2Web Power Tools

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