Ubidots Dashboards

With Ubidots, you can monitor your values remotely and get notifications when they go over set thresholds.

On how to set up Ubidots to work with TOWER, you just need to follow a few simple steps.

note

Ubidots offers a free trial, but for more and larger projects you will need to follow their Pricing.

Get Ubidots API Token

First, you need to Create an Ubidots account.

After you have your account, you can get your API Token.

Click on your profile in the top-right corner
Select API Credentials
Copy your Default Token

Import Node-RED Flow

info

Here is the complete flow which you can import to Node-RED.

tip

If you don't know what a Node-RED is, you can read the Desktop Programming section or Server on Raspberry Pi section.

Node-RED flow JSON

tip

You can change the YOUR-TOKEN-HERE on highlighted line for your Default Token here or after import in the GUI by clicking on the blue Ubidots node.

[
   {
      "id":"6c6622f5.06be2c",
      "type":"mqtt in",
      "z":"2c41a2bd.aa36ae",
      "name":"",
      "topic":"node/#",
      "qos":"2",
      "broker":"29fba84a.b2af58",
      "x":70,
      "y":40,
      "wires":[
         [
            "f3036e8f.15107"
         ]
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":"f3036e8f.15107",
      "type":"function",
      "z":"2c41a2bd.aa36ae",
      "name":"Ubidots Decode",
      "func":"// Declare variables\nvar ubi_payload = {}\nvar ubi_msg = {};\nvar topic = msg.topic.split(\"/\");\n\n// Get device label, variable name and value from HARDWARIO message\nvar device_label = topic[1];\nvar variable = topic[4];\nvar value = msg.payload;\n\n// Build Ubidots MQTT payload\nubi_msg['device_label'] = device_label;\nubi_payload[variable] = value;\nubi_msg['payload'] = ubi_payload;\nreturn ubi_msg;",
      "outputs":1,
      "noerr":0,
      "x":280,
      "y":40,
      "wires":[
         [
            "3ae188a9.accc48"
         ]
      ]
   },
   {
      "id":"3ae188a9.accc48",
      "type":"ubidots_out",
      "z":"2c41a2bd.aa36ae",
      "name":"",
      "token":"YOUR-TOKEN-HERE",
      "label_device":"",
      "device_label":"",
      "tier":"educational",
      "x":530,
      "y":40,
      "wires":[

      ]
   },
   {
      "id":"29fba84a.b2af58",
      "type":"mqtt-broker",
      "z":"",
      "broker":"127.0.0.1",
      "port":"1883",
      "clientid":"",
      "usetls":false,
      "compatmode":true,
      "keepalive":"60",
      "cleansession":true,
      "birthTopic":"",
      "birthQos":"0",
      "birthPayload":"",
      "willTopic":"",
      "willQos":"0",
      "willPayload":""
   }
]

The Ubidots Node

TOWER utilizes Ubidots official Node-RED node, which connects to Ubidots’ MQTT broker and expects a Node-RED message with the following format:

{
    "device_label": YOUR_DEVICE_NAME,
    "payload": {"SENSOR_VARIABLE_NAME": "SENSOR_VARIABLE_VALUE"}
}

To aggregate TOWER messages into the expected Ubidots format, a function node(orange node) called Ubidots Decode is used (this function is already included in the Node-RED flow above)

// Declare variables
var ubi_payload = {}
var ubi_msg = {};
var topic = msg.topic.split("/");

// Get device label, variable name and value from HARDWARIO message
var device_label = topic[1];
var variable = topic[4];
var value = msg.payload;

// Build Ubidots MQTT payload
ubi_msg['device_label'] = device_label;
ubi_payload[variable] = value;
ubi_msg['payload'] = ubi_payload;
return ubi_msg;

info

Thanks to this simple setup a new Ubidots device will be created for every new TOWER module detected by your TOWER gateway.

You don't have to do any additional setup if you don't want to.

tip

In the Data -> Dashboard Tab you can create a preview of all your important values. In the Data->Event Tab you can set rules so you’ll get notified when some value gets out of the limits. The SMS notification is easy to set up.

Get Ubidots API Token​

Import Node-RED Flow​

The Ubidots Node​

Get Ubidots API Token

Import Node-RED Flow

The Ubidots Node