COMX Replacement scenario / EO pre-configuration

[pbrunot]

Hello,

We're evaluating the COMX as a replacement of EGX300 for a large number of submetering kits sold to ENEL (large Utility company in Italy).  The gateway is used to push data to Energy Operation portal.

Energy Operation portal also receives metered data from billing system of ENEL (it's not only made of submetering kits).We're dealing with 100's of kits now and plan to sell 1000's next year in this model.

For many practical reasons we cannot preconfigure COMX for a given site before to ship them to end-users (endusers order them in bulk and give it to third party companies for installation). So the project team must give configuration instructions to installers, and prepare EO accordingly, so that activation goes smoothly with minimal =S= involvement.

We're doing office tests with COMX and have come to the following conclusions :

1- The DeviceID used by the COMX is non-editable and generated randomly.

2- DeviceID is not printed so it cannot be known before device is installed / powered on
3- Since this deviceid is used to push data in EO, if it changes, the upload mechanism breaks: the hierarchy can be resent to EO after device id change, but this results in new meters being created (not merged).

4- Since automatically created hierarchy cannot be set to match the existing hierarchy in EO, we must reconfigure the pushed hierarchy in EO for every meter.

We'd like to know if points 1, 2 and 3 are correct.

With EGX, we had to create from scratch the hierarchy in EO, but we were able to configure everything in EO before the EGX shipped : this because since we assigned device ID (based on site spatial hierarchy in EO) in the configuration instructions for the installers. With EGX, installers could install & configure everything and see the data in EO one hour after.

So we think the new DeviceID model creates some issues in our deployment scenario :

a. If a COMX needs replacement, there's no way to give it the old device id -> must rework the configuration in EO and historical data is lost (new meters)

b. With COMX, the deviceid is unknown until it is powered on -> we cannot pref-config EO, only configure EO only after device installation in the field.

Did we miss something? Any known workarounds for these issues ?

Thanks for your support!

[Anonymous user]

Hello Pascal,

I will let the experts respond more accurately but here are some feedbacks after several months of use of Com'X in an old French administrative building (R&D project) :

We've installed 5 Com'X connected to about 200 physical sensors (each one sending 5 measurments). Com'X also export to EO.

To my point of view, your first 3 points are correct.

For point 4 what we did is just ignore the hierarchy pushed by the Com'X :

     - after the first publication of the hierarchy (topology.xml), in EO all the meters were relocated under the default SITE_NEWMETERS site => we had to process again our own hierachy commissioning file from EO UI.

     - then the hierachy should not be exported again by the Com'X (in previous release, it was still the case after each reboot..)

For point a. we deal with ComX save/restore configuration.

For point b. I agree : you can pre-config in EO the hierarchy but not the meters (need to know the DeviceID).

We also expermented a "self hand made third party tool" in order to generate Com'X configuration.

Dimitri.

[Anonymous user · Accepted solution]

Point 1, 2 and 3 are correct :

1- The DeviceID used by the COMX is generated randomly.

2- DeviceID is not printed so it cannot be known before device is installed / powered on
3- Since this deviceid is used to push data in EO, if it changes, the upload mechanism breaks: the hierarchy can be resent to EO after device id change, but this results innew meters being created (not merged).

The only think I can add is that the site ID is displayed in the "General settings / publication" tab.

Point a can be completed a little bit : If you have saved the configuration of a Com'X 200 "A" (and saved the configuration file on your PC) ,

When you will restore this configuration to a Com'X 200 "B", this last one will get the ID of "A" .

This behaviour has been defined in order to suport the "Faulty Device Replacement" usecase

If you want to clone the Com'X 200 "A" on B", (but for another site), you have to click on the "Generate New Publication ID" button before to restart the periodic publication

(That's why the periodic publication is not restarted automaticaly after a configuration restore)

[sesa24896]

Hi Pascal

We are currently working with Marco Melato's team to provide a tool (feb 2014) that will generate automatically a Com'X configuration file with the same parameters entered by the installer than the ones in the excel sheet. The POD of Enel contract will then be used for the publication ID

You can talk to Marco directly to get more info