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2021

  • 1 min read

Release 3.8

Connect

  • UI based wizard for configuring and deploying a MQTT bridge app
  • UI based wizard for configuring and deploying a Roc bridge app
  • UI dialog to choose between supported protocols: MQTT, OPC UA and Roc

Bulk Import

  • CSV bulk upload and creation of Assets
  • CSV bulk upload and creation of Metrics

SDK and Edge Architecture Improvements

  • InfluxDB as a storage engine on the Edge
  • Removal of C++ dependency from Kelvin App SDK applications
  • Better build times performance and smaller docker images for Python applications
  • Kelvin-sdk now provides full autocomplete support for kelvin applications
  • Kelvin-sdk now features the creation of bridge applications
  • Fixed bug that was preventing pip credentials from being used in the builder image to install packages from private repositories
  • Fixed bug that was causing pydantic not to grab environment variables correctly, thus failing to set them.
  • Injector and Extractor utilities have been dropped from kelvin-sdk
  • Kelvin-sdk-app run loop is now MQTT Native
  • PubSub flavour applications are now supported on kelvin-sdk-app
  • Arbitrary data can now be emitted using the self.emit_value() function
  • kelvin-sdk-app now features a bridge application framework
  • kelvin-app renamed to kelvin-sdk-app
  • kelvin-icd now becomes kelvin-sdk-datatype

Security Improvement

  • Each Node will now have their own dedicated authentication token for communication with the Cloud API
  • 1 min read

Release 3.7

Connect

  • Added MQTT Bridge connector (no UI flow)
  • Added ROC Bridge connector (no UI flow)

Alarms, Alarms Monitoring and Management

  • Introducing the concepts of Alarm, Alarm Class and Alarm Type.
  • New monitoring dashboard to visualize, filter and analyze triggered alarms.
  • Create, manage and share alarm dashboard filters.
  • Manage alarm status on a single page (ack/resolve alarm).
  • Integrate alarms with applications by leveraging the Alarm API.

Alarm Integration for Asset Monitoring

  • Introduction of alarm status on the asset monitoring page. The feature will allow the user to identify what asset needs intervention and the number of triggered alarms in each asset.

Kelvin Manager Navigation Improvements

  • Improvement of the Sidebar navigation of Kelvin Manager to be more explicit on the actions and intentions of each section.
  • 2 min read

Release 3.6

Asset Class

Cloud Server now supports an additional layer in the asset representation that allows group Asset Types into Asset Classes. This makes easier to filter assets that have different types but belong to the same class. As an example, for asset class we can have Pump and for type we can have Rotary Pump and Hydraulic Pump.

E.g.:

 Pump (Class)
 ├── Rotary (Type)
 │   ├── pump 1 (Asset)
 │   └── pump 2 (Asset)
 └── Hydraulic (Type)
     └── pump 3 (Asset)

Asset Model Hierarchy

The Asset Model Hierarchy brings a relationship between assets that is very common, which is the parent <-> child relationship between assets. With this feature, the Platform supports configuring each asset parent with no limitation on how many levels, efficiently representing the most complex systems. As an example, a centrifugal pump is usually composed by Volute Casing, Closed Impellers, Wear Ring, Packaging, Shaft, Bearing House, Bearing Cover and Coupling. In Cloud Server now, it's possible to represent this in a tree view structure without limiting how many levels. Also, we provide a comprehensive management tool where the user can manage the tree structure by simply drag n drop the assets in the tree.

E.g.:

Pump
├── Volute Casing
├── Closed Impellers
├── Wear Ring
├── Packaging
├── Shaft
├── Bearing House
├── Bearing Cover
│   └── Bearing
├── Coupling

Kelvin Manager Dashboard

Kelvin Manager now has a dashboard section where the user can see how many nodes are down, how many assets are not receiving data, and visualize the system's entire tree view. In the tree view, the user can see the details of the asset like the last read values, properties, locations and the time-series data in the chart.

  • 3 min read

Release 3.5

Kelvin SDK

  • New Emulation System & Emulation configuration based on the app.yaml. The system configuration now applies to emulated applications.
  • Support for the new simplified app configuration as well as the new MQTT implementation.

Kelvin Connect

One of the most significant features of this release is the launch of Kelvin Connect v1.0 for OPC-UA protocol. Kelvin Connect is a part of our broader edge computing product strategy (Kelvin Edge) and is designed to make connection to machines and data sources like historians, PLCs, etc. in a manufacturing facility a breeze with a wizard based UI.

With Kelvin Connect, users can now easily create a bridge between OT data sources and the KICS software, map the OPC tags and metrics, and easily decide to bring the most relevant data into the KICS platform to do machine learning and / or to run applications.

In the current release, Kelvin Connect offers OPC-UA connectivity. Our intent is to extend the capabilities of Kelvin Connect in subsequent releases to offer additional OT + IT data integration capabilities as well.

Asset Model

An equally significant and long awaited development that we are introducing in this release is the introduction of 'Assets' and 'Asset Model' in our platform. Until now customer's machines / assets were identified in KICS software in correlation with the Node (gateways) which is not the right representation of assets, especially as our customers are scaling and there are scenarios where more than one asset could be connected to a Node.

In this release, we are introducing the 'Asset' representation and modeling capabilities. We are decoupling 'Assets' from 'ACPs' and renaming ACP to a more market and customer friendly term 'Node'.

The asset model definition in the platform will now allow us to bring new use cases in the following releases like asset representation in a hierarchy (July release), Asset health monitoring (August release), etc. The 'Nodes' on the other hand will represent the IT workloads and information (bridges, connections, other workloads running on the gateway and their health). Together this Asset + Node view will offer our customers complete operational intelligence about their facility and infrastructure -- something which is going to be a key differentiator of our software.

Move to MQTT in Kelvin Core

One of the bedrocks of the KICS platform has been it's modularity and flexibility to run and manage multiple workloads across various 'Nodes'. As 3rd party workloads and services are becoming more and more modular, we want to create a framework that will allow our customers, partners and acceleration teams to easily extend and plug'n'play additional software and services on the platform without the need for code change or engineering intervention.

With that in mind, we are making a significant move away from OPC-UA as the 'transport' mechanism between workloads in Kelvin Core at the edge to a more user and ecosystem friendly pub-sub mechanism based on MQTT.

With this change, it's now easy for customers and partners to bring their own workloads and 'subscribe' to the MQTT queue in Kelvin Core. These workloads could be packaged applications, data science models, other services (ex: Object DB, custom system integration, etc.).\

  • 1 min read

Release 3.2

Kelvin Control Center

  • Improve Control Center experience by enabling auto polling on lists to avoid unnecessary page refreshes

APIs

  • Improve efficiency and speed on Flow-based application builds in the backend

Upgrade to KICS 3.2.0

For users who have developed Kelvin Applications with older version than KICS 3.1.1, here are the steps to upgrade to KICS 3.1.1.

  1. Upgrade current running Platform Server Instance to KICS 3.2.0.
  2. Upgrade your local Kelvin SDK to KICS 3.2.0.\