TECH TALK

We’ve added an extra layer of protection to OCTOBUS accounts with the introduction of Two-Factor Authentication (2FA).

To activate your account, you’ll need to set up a mobile authenticator app. This enhances your account security by requiring both your password and a time-based verification code.

How to Set It Up:

1. Enable Authenticator App 

2. Download an authenticator app:

• Microsoft Authenticator

• FreeOTP

• Google Authenticator

3. Scan the QR code or enter the setup key manually.

4. Enter the verification code generated by the app.

5. Name your device for easy recognition in the future.

It's quick, easy, and adds a valuable layer of protection to your account. With 2FA in place, you can confidently work, knowing your data and access are secure. Simple, effective, and built for peace of mind.

A new enhancement has arrived on the OCTOBUS dashboard—Widget Background.

You can now change the background color of individual widgets, making it easier to group, prioritize, or visually segment content across your dashboard. Whether color-coding by data type or just freshening up your interface, this feature offers more control over your dashboard’s look and feel.

Highlights:

• Select from preset or custom colors

• Improve visual clarity and user focus

• Create a more personalized experience

Ready to try it out? Just head to your widget settings and start coloring!

At OCTOBUS, we’re committed to delivering a fast, reliable SaaS IoT platform that scales with your business. To ensure we meet the highest standards, we use Locust for performance testing and Cypress for automated UI testing. These tools help us deliver a platform that’s both high-performing and bug-free.

Locust allows us to simulate thousands of users and devices interacting with the platform, helping us test how it performs under stress. It provides real-time metrics, so we can quickly spot and fix any potential bottlenecks. This ensures that OCTOBUS can handle growing demands without breaking a sweat.

For Cypress, we automate UI testing to make sure the platform’s interface is smooth, responsive, and free of bugs. Cypress runs end-to-end tests, mimicking real user behavior and giving us fast feedback to fix issues before deployment. This guarantees our users a seamless and frustration-free experience every time.

By using Locust and Cypress, we ensure that OCTOBUS is not only powerful but also exceptional to use. These tools help us stay ahead, optimizing performance and quality at every step.

Want to learn more about how OCTOBUS can optimize your business? Sign up today or Contact us for more info!

We are excited to introduce the new look of the Organizational Unit (OU) page, now called Organigram. Previously, the OU was displayed as a hierarchy, but with this updated design, users can now view key details at a glance. Without needing to load a full model, users can quickly see the number of assets, users, rules, and dashboards associated with each OU. This enhancement improves accessibility and efficiency, making it easier to manage organizational data.

The new feature not only gives the platform a sleek new look but also comes with several key benefits:

🔹 Reduces Eye Strain: Dark Mode is easier on the eyes, especially in low-light environments. Whether you’re working late or in dimly lit areas, Dark Mode makes it more comfortable to focus.

🔹Improves Battery Life: Dark Mode helps conserve battery power on devices with OLED screens, allowing you to work longer without needing to recharge.

🔹 Enhanced Focus: The darker background helps reduce visual distractions, making it easier to concentrate on important data and tasks.

How to Create a Gauge Chart Widget in OCTOBUS IoT Platform (Youtube)

Our updated Gauge Chart offers an intuitive way to visualize data, making it easier for all users to understand at a glance. The visualization allows users to quickly grasp the presented information. When defining the visualization, users can choose to display it as a percentage or a specific value. For the specific value we allow up to 10 conditions to be added, and users can freely set value ranges (Min -Max) to match corresponding colors then gauge chart will display fancy as you define on your dashboard, this function will support our user in order to create a gauge chart that extremely customizable, adjustable to your data, and can fit several different scenarios to their dashboard.

OCTOBUS now has a new feature called the Statistic Number widget. This widget is available for users who want to display the consumption data of any sensors. For example, if a user has three sensors on the aircon circuit breakers for the meeting room, living room, and lobby, they can create different widgets to show the consumption over specific time periods. In OCTOBUS, users can select from three types of specific time settings: Quick, Relative, and Time Period. This feature will help users monitor their consumption more easily.

OCTOBUS now has a new widget type called the Static widget. This widget type is available for users to display various information about their organization, information about asset type’s properties and attributes, as well as specific asset attributes. The Static widget enhances the dashboard by providing static, informative content that can help users better understand and manage their assets and organizational details.

SMS notifications via Twilio - a third-party fee-based service are now available. This feature will facilitate convenience for our OCTOBUS users. No matter where they are, they can receive important notifications at any time, ensuring seamless communication and timely updates. To get started, create a notification channel by configuring a webhook with the appropriate endpoint and headers. Then, add this channel to any rule configuration where users wish to receive notifications when the rule is triggered. Customize the message and save the updated rule configuration. Once the rule is violated, OCTOBUS will send an SMS directly to notify the user.

OCTOBUS has implemented worldwide time-zone support for Organization Units (OU). This new feature will benefit our customers who have child OU located in different parts of the world or in large countries with more than one time zone. We provide all time zone options, so users can freely select the appropriate time zone for each child OU. This means that child OU can have a different time zone from their parent OU. After setting up the OU time zone, the timestamp of all asset measurement data in this OU will depend on the OU time zone, which users will see on the Dashboard and when exporting data.

In OCTOLab's latest functionality, users gain the ability to manually manipulate their widget's data and visualize it alongside real-time data from the original sources. This feature greatly enhances the potential for data analysis and cleansing. Moreover, it seamlessly integrates with our suite of analytics tools, including regression analysis, enabling users to observe trend lines and formula changes in real-time.

Exciting developments for Node-RED developers! OCTOBUS has introduced a groundbreaking OCTOBUS-connector library that effortlessly produces all the necessary flows and nodes for seamless integration with your data source. With a built-in scheduler, it automatically synchronizes and updates the latest flow on the OCTOBUS client, eliminating the need for manual remote changes on the local Edge device. 

We are happy to announce that OCTOBUS will now be available in Germany, deployed on the local AWS German Region node. Users in Germany and neighbouring countries will now enjoy a high-performance, real time capable and data driven IIoT SaaS Platform that is OCTOBUS with all of its critical features presents with the additional localization and tweaks to suit our European customers. Whether your use cases are smart farming, smart city, or smart industries related, we are ready to serve your needs.

Please visit https://app.de.octobus.ai/signin and try it out today! 

We've seamlessly connected OCTOBUS with the blockchain, addressing the need for transparency, security, and efficiency optimization in various use cases. The process of integrating OCTOBUS at an organizational level is structured into two distinct steps. So, how does it work?

Step 1

🔹 First, we need to establish the connection and set up the digital organization with its digital assets. Create/connect a WALLET that is connected to the organization and the WALLET ID is reported back to OCTOBUS.

🔹 When creating a digital organization and/or entity, a COLLECTION is used as a container to collect all relevant digital assets that are reported back to OCTOBUS to establish the connection between the organization and the collection.

🔹 Each asset that needs to collect and report information receives its Digital Twin, for which we use the pattern of the NFT and which is linked to the corresponding COLLECTION. All Digital Twins are reported back to OCTOBUS to be linked to the appropriate metadata information.

Once the set-up activities are complete, we are ready for the second step - data capture.

Step 2

🔹 To this end, we have created a SMART CONTRACT that is called for each record in the blockchain that is issued by a rule defined on the OCTOBUS side.

🔹 The violation is forwarded via a webhook that sends a message to the blockchain processor to store all relevant and defined information. What is it good for? For instance, it is used in conjunction with sensors to detect water leaks in high-rise buildings. When a water leak is detected, the alert is sent to the blockchain via webhook, along with all the relevant information for contract creation. The service technicians can be notified. As soon as they arrive, the water supply is shut off - the message is recorded. By activating the actuator on the sensor, another message is sent to the blockchain to document the response and resolution time.

And this is the description of just one scenario; many others are possible. By using concepts such as DAO, the service provider could even issue the bill immediately and pay it in one fell swoop, without the need for human intervention.  

OCTOBUS implemented Downsampling of data on graphical line chart widgets. Downsampling involves reducing the amount of displayed data points to improve performance and visualization clarity. This process typically involves aggregating or averaging groups of data points to create a simplified representation of the original dataset.

By reducing the data density, downsampling helps maintain a smooth and responsive user experience when interacting with the graphical widget, especially when dealing with large datasets. Reducing the selected time frame in the line charts provides a more intricate and detailed perspective.

Showing the relationship between two factors can sometimes be quite complexed. Some factors may involved more than just an input sequence from an asset's measurement, some may required an averaged results from multiple sources, and some may require that the value gets multiplied by some factors first before taken into consideration. Regardless of the case, we now have a powerful Statistics Formula Builder that enables the users to plot complex relationships on the statistical widget with ease.

Statistics Formula Builder feature is now available on Statistical scatter plot, linear regression, polynomial regression, exponential regression and logarithmic regression. 

OCTOBUS users can now define and use “Work shift”, a custom user-defined period of time where statistics aggregation can be calculated upon. This feature is very useful when an in depth statistical analysis needs to be made on a specific time period of a day. Say you want to calculate the average electricity consumption of the office building but your office only operates from 9 am to 6 pm on weekdays. With work shift, we can now define and only take into account such time periods to calculate the averages of a measurement. With this, the results on screen will reflect the actual use cases much more accurately.

Work shift feature is now available on Statistical scatter plot, linear regression, polynomial regression, exponential regression and logarithmic regression. 

We are developing a digital twin feature. Soon, users will be able to seamlessly import a variety of model formats including IFC (2x3 and 4), glTF, OBJ, STL, 3DXML, LAZ/LAS, CityJSON, XKT, and many more of real-world assets such as factories, machines, and buildings. By positioning beacons on these digital models, the platform will display real-time data, giving users a dynamic glimpse into their operational landscapes. The ability to set custom tags on each layer promises tailored insights and greater depth in performance analysis. This innovation will set a new standard in operational efficiency. 

Under development at the moment. The customer requirement was to get a linear regression for the aircon electricity consumption based on the temperature difference between indoor and outdoor temperature.

As the Linear, Exponential and Polynomial are quite close together we are implementing all three of them.

The 3D Bar Graph shows the same data as in the example below for the power consumption of aircons in an office building.

The setup, as for all of our graphs, is dynamic. You can choose the x and y axis freely, define the timespan and create the conditioned coloring.

As the statistics engine in OCTOBUS allows us to collect data on a long term basis, we created a new heatmap. 

The example shows the electricity consumption in "watt per hour" on a selected timespan. 

As OCTOBUS aggregates all measurements, this could also reflect used resources in production environments, or water usage or AQI levels.

We have been asked by several customers to create the possibility of inviting people to share a dashboard for information purposes only. At the moment you need to be a registered user if you want to work with dashboards within OCTOBUS.

So, we created the feature "sharable link". Within dashboards, users can now create shareable links and send them to anyone in the world to have a shared view of the created dashboard, without the need of logging in.