Devices

Devices are things that directly or indirectly send data and receive commands.

Devices publish data to Maximo® Monitor by using events. The device controls the content of the event and assigns a name for each event that is sent. When a device event is received, the system checks the credentials that are associated with the connection that delivered the event. These credentials are then used to identify the originating device. This architecture prevents a device from impersonating another device.

Device registration

A device must be registered with an organization before it can connect to Maximo Monitor. Registered devices identify themselves by using a unique device identifier, which is composed of four parts:

  • Class ID (classId). This identifies the device as a standard device when set to d.
  • Organization ID (orgId). This is a globally unique identifier for your instance, assigned when you first register with Maximo Monitor.
  • Type ID (typeId). This is the ID of the device type, unique within your organization. Think of this as analogous to a model number.
  • Device ID (deviceId). This is the ID of the device. It is unique within the devices of a specific type only. Think of this as analogous to a serial number. The device ID must be no more than 36 characters and can contain only alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9), hyphens (-), underscores (_). For network connected devices, the device ID might, for example, be the device MAC address without any separating colons.

Devices are intended to mirror the physical deployment of hardware that generates IoT data, regardless of whether that hardware connects directly to the internet or not. If you deploy six pieces of hardware, each with separate attributes such as firmware and software, you do not need to create an "abstract device" that represents all six. Merging devices makes it more difficult to use advanced Maximo Monitor capabilities for device and data management.

For more information about adding devices in Maximo Monitor, see Getting started for users.

Device authentication

Maximo Monitor supports token based authentication. On adding a device, you can optionally provide the authentication token the device must use, or you can use an automatically generated token. If you choose to create your own token, make sure that the length is in the range 8 - 36 characters. Also, the token must consists of only alphanumeric characters and the following special characters: Hyphen (-), underscore (_), exclamation-point (!), ampersand (&), At sign (@), question mark (?), asterisk (*), plus sign (+), period (.), parentheses.

In Maximo Monitor 9.0, devices from the library do not use tokens.

Device connectivity

If you are also using the IoT tool, MQTT is the preferred method to connect your device to the IoT tool. Device connectivity over MQTT is covered in full in Communicating with devices.

Otherwise, use the HTTP Messaging API to send events and receive commands without connecting the device. For more information, see APIs.

For information about the official SDKs that support device development, see SDKs.

You can use MQTT to import historical data into Maximo Monitor.

Exploring device data

You can access your device data from the Monitor page and from the Setup page. Use the dashboard builder to create the dashboard. In a dashboard, you can customize columns, apply filters, and apply search criteria and save these settings as a view. Views can be made public or private.

On the Monitor page, in a dashboard, for a hierarchy node or device type, select the Alerts dashboard to view alerts. You can change the status, assign an owner, or drill down to a device dashboard. If you filter on a dimension value in the Alerts table, the filter is applied to the first five device types found with this dimension value. To filter on a dimensions value, choose a dimension that applies to a small subset of devices.