Verified Telemetry Custom Solution Sample

Table of Contents

• Verified Telemetry Overview
• Steps to setup Custom Solution Template
• Steps to setup Verified Telemetry Configuration
• Consuming Verified Telemetry Information
• FAQ
• Next Steps

Verified Telemetry Overview

The quality of sensor data is fundamental for driving IoT adoption. Since IoT sensors are made of low-cost components, deployed in-the-wild and in harsh environments, they are prone to failures leading to faulty or dirty data. The effect of bad data will lead to the well-known garbage-in garbage-out process, leading to cascading ill-effects upstream and at times catastrophic decisions.

Verified Telemetry (VT) is a state-of-the-art solution to determine the health of the sensor, i.e., working or faulty, which is consequently used to determine the quality of the sensed data. This is achieved by devising an intelligent “sensor fingerprint”, a set of unique electrical characteristics that differs between working and faulty sensors. The fingerprints can detect faults for a wide variety of off-the-shelf sensors and can be easily implemented with lightweight software code running on the IoT device. This novel approach empowers customers with a reliable and automated way to remotely measure and observe the health of the sensor in real-time alongside the data collected. The data associated with a validated fingerprint results in verified telemetry (as shown below).

	Description
Verified Telemetry Device SDK	The SDK which builds on the Azure RTOS or FreeRTOS middleware
Azure RTOS samples, FreeRTOS samples	These Getting Started guides shows device developers how to combine Verified Telemetry with Azure IoT and Azure RTOS or FreeRTOS.
Verified Telemetry Custom Solution Sample	Uses InfluxDB, Grafana and the Azure IoT Node.js SDK to communicate with Azure IoT Hub and showcase how the Verified Telemetry features can be utilized in real world scenarios.

Steps to setup Custom Solution Template

This getting started guide will help you setup VT solution sample, which allows users to collect fingerprints on-the-fly, view telemetry data and telemetry status in a dashboard. The solution sample is developed as a docker container image, thus enabling users to seamlessly interact with VT enabled device.

Prerequisites

• Setup one of the board specific device samples:

  • Azure RTOS samples
  • FreeRTOS samples

  NOTE: Ensure your device is up and running before you proceed to the next step

  NOTE: Save the Device ID that you have configured

  WARNING: Ensure the IoT Hub that you are using has ZERO endpoints configured (TSI/Blob Storage etc). This solution sample requires all IoT Hub Data to be routed to the built-in Event Hub and hence if any endpoint is configured, the solution sample would not work! If there are endpoints that are configured for the IoT Hub, you need to create a new IoT Hub or you can delete all of the existing configured endpoints

Step 1: Clone the repository

To clone the repo, run the following command:

git clone --recursive https://github.com/Azure/Verified-Telemetry-Solution-Sample.git

Step 2: Setup Docker Desktop

• Steps to install Docker locally can be found here
• If you run into issues, please see Docker Troubleshooting page for more details
• Ensure Docker Desktop is up and running (click the system tray icon on the task bar to see the docker status)

Step 3: Run the Docker application

• Install VS Code

• Open the Extensions view (Ctrl+Shift+X), search for docker to filter results and select Docker extension authored by Microsoft.

  

• Open the folder (Ctrl+K+O) Verified-Telemetry-Solution-Sample in VS Code

• Open Explorer View (Ctrl+Shift+E), Right click on file docker-compose.yml and select Compose Up

  

• Ensure notifications on your PC are ON.

• You can potentially get a file sharing request shown below while docker creates your application. If you do get the access request, click on Share It

  

• In case you update your constants.js file later, Right click on file docker-compose.yml and select Compose Restart

NOTE: If you do not want to use VS code and the docker extension, you can run the following command in the root folder Verified-Telemetry-Solution-Sample

docker-compose up -d

Step 4: Get IoT Hub Connection String

• In your CLI console, run the az iot hub show-connection-string command to get the connection string for your IoT hub.

  az iot hub show-connection-string --name {YourIoTHubName}
  

Step 5: Configure Azure IoT Hub and Device ID settings

This is a very important step to ensure the custom solution can fetch telemetry from Azure Event Hub and send command & property updates to your IoT Device

• Open your browser and navigate to below URL to access the Solution Sample Configuration Form

  http://localhost:8080/

  

• Enter Azure IoT Hub Connection String and IoT Device ID and hit Save Configuration

  Field	Value	Example
  IoT Hub Connection String	{Your IoT Hub Connection String saved in Step 4}	e.g., 'HostName=xxxxxxx.azure-devices.net; SharedAccessKeyName=iothubowner; SharedAccessKey=xxxxxxxxxxx'
  Device ID	{Your device ID}	e.g., MyMXChipDevice

  

• Upon successful configuration the following message would be displayed

  Click on the link to navigate to the solution sample landing page

  

• If an illegal IoT Hub Connection String is provided, you might see the following error message

  Re-open and re-fill the configuration settings form and ensure that a valid IoT Hub Connection String is provided

  

Step 5: Open Solution Sample landing page

• Open your browser and navigate to below URL

  http://localhost:3030

  

Step 6: Enter following credentials

Credential	Default Value
username	admin
password	admin

You can skip the password reset and proceed forward.

Step 7: View the Dashboard

• Navigate to Search -> Verified Telemetry -1 Dashboard

Step 8: Select the Device From the Drop-Down Menu

• Select the device configured with Verified Telemetry, here we use SolutionSampleTestDevice as the device.

Steps to setup Verified Telemetry Configuration

Select Sensor to Monitor and Configure

• Verified Telemetry Dashboard supports multiple telemetry streams. 2 sensors can be monitored at the same time, these can be selected using the drop-down menus at the top of the page labeled Telemetry1 and Telemetry2.

• Select the telemetries configured with Verified Telemetry in the Device Sample from the drop-down menus, for example: Telemetry1 : soilMoistureExternal1 or Telemetry2 : PMSExternal1. The graph and command button changes automatically to work with the sensors selected in the drop-down menu.

  • Telemetry1 Drop-Down menu

  • Telemetry2 Drop-Down menu

Enable Verified Telemetry

• By default, Verified Telemetry is enabled and the status is shown on the right-hand side of the dashboard as seen in the image below.

• If the status is disabled, Please click the Enable button to turn ON Verified Telemetry.

  

Collect Fingerprint Template for Soil Moisture 1 telemetry

• In order to get VT status for Soil Moisture 1 telemetry, we should collect a fingerprint template (ideally once).

• To collect the fingerprint template for the attached sensor 'Soil Moisture 1' telemetry, issue command Set/Reset Fingerprint Template

  Note: If the fingerprint template is not set for a device, VT status cannot be obtained and will result in unverified telemetry data shown in orange

  

Consuming Verified Telemetry Information

• Now that for all the sensors, a working fingerprint template has been collected, we can now see both the device status and telemetry status.

• The property Device Status indicates that all the telemetries supported by Verified Telemetry (i.e., Soil Moisture 1 and 2) are verified and the telemetry color GREEN indicates that both Soil Moisture 1 and Soil Moisture 2 telemetries are verified.

  

• To test whether the attached sensors are working as expected, hold the moisture sensor in your palm as shown below. Since these sensors are capacitive sensors, more the moisture lower is their output. We can see this expected decrease on the solution sample dashboard.

  • Soil Moisture Sensor in Hand

  • Soil Moisture Sensor Telemetry

• Simulate a faulty sensor: To simulate a faulty sensor, just disconnect Ground Pin (GND) on the Soil Moisture Sensor 1 which would create an Open Port fault!

  • We can see that the telemetry data still shows some data, which is typically garbage/dirty. Detecting such data as garbage/faulty is non-trivial and VT automatically detects the faulty sensor and changes the telemetry color to RED

  

  • You can now connect back the Ground Pin to the sensor and see that telemetry color of 'Soil Moisture 1' sensor turning to GREEN immediately.

FAQ

• Q: What happens if the device reboots after collection of Fingerprint Template?

  • A: Our library stores the Verified Telemetry Fingerprint Templates in the Digital Twin. By fetching the Digital Twin after reboot, the device goes back to its original state that it was in before reboot. Thus, user collects the fingerprint template only once when the sensor is provisioned and working.

• Q: What happens if Verified Telemetry is disabled by the property enableVerifiedTelemetry ?

  • A: The telemetry status of all telemetries supported by Verified Telemetry go to unverified and the telemetry plot turns Yellow, indicating that the telemetries are not Verified.

• Q: Does the solution sample display Telemetries which are not supported by Verified Telemetry feature?

  • A: Yes! You can scroll down in the Telemetry1 and Telemetry2 Drop-Down menus to see the telemetries which are not supported by VT in the device samples. These telemetries would have a Yellow plot as they are not verified.

• Q: Can the solution be reconfigured to read and interact with a new device which might be connected to a different IoT Hub?

  • A: Yes! Open your browser and navigate to below URL

    http://localhost:8080/configuration-form

    Submitting this form with new and valid details will re-configure the solution sample to read and interact with a new device

Next Steps

• With this sample, you have now setup a Verified Telemetry Custom Solution Sample and interacted with a Verified Telemetry Device Sample