Alarms and Notifications
The Alarms and Notifications feature enables you to monitor the health of your device network by alerting you when your devices are encountering connectivity issues. You may configure a variety of alarms related to device connectivity conditions and receive notifications when those conditions are triggered. Notifications may be configured as an email or HTTP push (see web services monitor enhancements).
Data Streams
With an iDigi Data Streams subscription, you can store and access time-series data on iDigi indefinitely and utilize data visualization tools. Highly affordable at $0.09 per GB, per day, click here to create an account on the iDigi Device Cloud and subscribe.
Web Services Monitor Enhancements
Further enhancements have been made to the iDigi Web Services Monitor feature. These enhancements include:
Simple HTTP Device Interface
Devices that are not natively able to connect to iDigi and are not able to take advantage of the iDigi Connector may now connect to iDigi using a simple HTTP interface.
Automatic Device ID Assignment
As iDigi connection options for devices continue to expand as a result of the iDigi Connector, Digi has added the ability for the iDigi Device Cloud to automatically assign a unique device ID. This option will be very useful for devices that may run multiple iDigi Connector clients.
In conjunction with this feature, Digi has enhanced internal error checking on device ID assignment and device registration to ensure devices are provisioned properly.
Please see the DeviceCore section in the "iDigi Web Services Programming Guide" for more information on device provisioning.Device Restrictions
This capability allows the administrator to effectively disable the device without removing it from the account deemed necessary for any reason.
Data Services UI Changes
The Data Services sub-menu was moved from under the iDigi Manager Pro menu to its own top-level menu. This menu contains UI elements for the traditional file access as well as the new Data Streams feature.
Hierarchical Groups
Organize devices into groups for easier management. Assets associated with devices such as ZigBee networks and file collections follow the same group hierarchy as their parent device. Web services interfaces support group names in order to easily target a subset of devices, or associated assets, in the complete inventory. Group assignment may be done in the UI or via web services. For more information on groups, refer to the "iDigi User's Guide" or "iDigi Web Services Programming Guide" under the "Help & Downloads" section of the iDigi UI for more information.
Creating and Scheduling Custom Tasks
iDigi has introduced a new concept called a task. Tasks consist of a command or multiple commands chained together. Tasks may be scheduled to execute immediately, at a pre-determined time or on a recurring basis. Tasks may also be scheduled against devices that are disconnected and iDigi will queue the operation for those devices until they reconnect. Schedules may be assigned to a single device, multiple devices, tag names or groups. Refer to the "iDigi User's Guide" under the "Help & Downloads" section of the iDigi UI for more information.
Web Services Monitor Enhancements
The following enhancements have been made to the iDigi Web Services Monitor feature:
UI Enhancements
iDigi has been updated with a new look and feel. Menu items have been reorganized to make better use of screen real-estate as well as better categorize similar functions.
Device Connection History Enhancements
In previous versions of iDigi, the device connection history, available under the device properties, was displayed in Central Standard or Central Daylight time in addition to other limitations such as only displaying the 10 most recent connect/disconnect events. The connection history has been enhanced to show each connection as a complete session so it is apparent as to when the session started and ended as well as the reason for disconnecting if it can be determined. Additionally, the connect/disconnect times are displayed in the local time zone for the user viewing the connection history. There will also be several months-worth of connection history.
Iridium Satellite Support
Digi devices that support the Iridium satellite module as well as the iDigi SM (short message) protocol may now send and receive data via the Iridium satellite network similar to cellular devices using SMS. Basic commands may be sent via the iDigi Manager Pro interface or applications may exchange data with satellite-enabled devices via iDigi web services.
Operations Page Changes
The Operations page within iDigi Manager Pro now includes records related to SMS or Iridium satellite jobs. In addition, job details are now available by double-clicking on a job.
Added Compression to the iDigi Short Message Protocol
Compression was added to the iDigi SM protocol which is used to send/receive data over both SMS and satellite networks. The message will only be compressed if the resulting size is smaller than the original message. Messages will then be handled in the same way as they were previously. For example: if a message (compressed or uncompressed) is too large to fit in a single SMS or satellite message payload, it will be split into multiple messages.
General UI Enhancements
Subtle changes were made to the layout of the iDigi platform web page. Links to Support as well as Resources, including documentation and other developer tools, we moved to the banner. The Services and My Account links were moved into the Home section of the menu on the left side of the page. Version information was added to the bottom of the welcome page.
Timestamp Resolution Enhancement
All ISO8601 timestamp fields have been enhanced to include the optional millisecond component. Web services have always accepted milliseconds on input and now will consistently report these values on output as well. For example: 2012-01-12T06:16:55.235Z
Web Services Monitor
A new iDigi Web Services feature has been introduced that enables application developers to register an application for asynchronous event updates. These events may be data elements received by iDigi or device status changes. This implementation supports a TCP or SSL connection as the connection between the monitoring application and the iDigi Device Cloud. There is a new web services interface "ws/Monitor" provided for the monitoring application to configure subscriptions to the events it intends to monitor.
Note: If your application loses its connection to iDigi, you may lose data or events that would have been pushed during the time your application was not connected. You will need to recover those events using the traditional web services interface corresponding to the data services you are monitoring. See the "Web Services Console" in the iDigi Manager Pro UI or the "iDigi Web Services Programming Guide" for more information on configuring and using this new capability.
Device Tagging
You now have the ability to assign tag names to your devices under the "Devices" view in iDigi Manager Pro. This allows you to group devices based on any criteria you choose. You can filter your list based on tags in iDigi Manager Pro. You may also issue a web services request to a group of devices by simply specifying a tag name rather than a list of device IDs. See the "iDigi User's Guide" and "iDigi Web Services Programming Guide" for more information.
Direct Access to the Command-line Interface
A new capability has been added to the device properties view in iDigi Manager Pro that enables users to send commands to the command-line interface of Digi Connect and Digi ConnectPort gateways. The new module provides an interactive interface which allows the user to type in a command and view the response exactly as they would from a telnet or SSH session to the gateway. The option will only appear if the firmware running in the target gateway supports this feature. The firmware must be version 2.14.1 or greater (for Digi Connect or Digi ConnectPort products currently). This capability is also available via web services via the SCI interface.
New Data Service Web Services Command
A new command "data_service" has been added to the SCI web services interface to support sending messages from a web services client to a gateway (or group of gateways). This new command provides the ability for an application to send text or binary data to an application running on the gateway. This new command is compatible with the Digi Connect and Digi ConnectPort family of gateways. The firmware running on the target gateway must be version 2.14.0 or greater.
The data_service command is similar to the RCI do_command; however, there are two main differences:
Timestamp Normalization Behavior Change
In previous versions, record timestamps that did not explicitly specify UTC (or an offset from UTC) in ISO 8601 format were normalized to UTC assuming they were US Central Time (with DST offset per US standards). They will now be normalized assuming they are in UTC time to provide a more consistent and global standard.
Smart Energy applications, and other applications that specified the absolute time reference in supported formats will NOT be affected by this change. Also, records uploaded with unreadable timestamps, or obviously incorrect timestamps (such as those far in the past), are likely NOT affected by this change as these timestamps are ignored and records are timestamped with the time of posting to iDigi in UTC.
Those using the production, unmodified, idigi-db Dia presentation, or any other application that provides a timestamp readable by iDigi, but does not explicitly specify UTC (or the offset from UTC), WILL almost certainly be affected by this behavior change.
Examples of supported timestamp formats:
2012-12-22T03:16:44Z
2012-12-21T19:16:44-08:00
In summary, if you are not already adjusting for the previous behavior in your application, you will not likely be affected by this change. We expect those affected will be a relatively small minority.
New SCI file system command
A new facility has been added to the gateway management protocol which allows streaming of files between the gateway and the iDigi platform. This coincides with a new top-level SCI command, "file_system". The new facility provides a couple of key advantages over the old approach:
Reference to files stored in the temp data store for firmware and file system commands
The SCI interface now allows a reference to a file in the FileData storage table. You may use the existing /ws/FileData REST APIs to put a file in to storage and then reference that file path in the SCI update_firmware or file system put_file request.
Improved billing summary view
The addition of a new "Services" view under the "Administration" section in the left-hand menu tree gives users a summary view of services. The user will also be able to see the current number of units used for billing associated with each service.
Updated JavaScript Libraries
Updated JavaScript libraries to support the latest HTML5-based web browsers. We now support Microsoft Internet Explorer 9, Mozilla Firefox 4 and 5, Google Chrome 12 and Apple Safari 5.
User-definable meta data for DeviceCore
A new element has been added to the DeviceCore API: dpUserMetaData. This is a user-definable text field that can be used by a developer to label a device. This field is stored in iDigi independent of the device so the connection status of the device does not matter when setting this element.
Added GZIP compression for web services
GZIP compression was added which significantly reduces the data size for web services requests which contain responses with large amounts of data. Testing showed data reduction of up to 95% for both XML and JSON along with a 70-80% improvement in read times.
In order to specify GZIP compression, you need to add the following field to the request header:
SMS for device management and data
Devices and iDigi may now exchange information using SMS in addition to the traditional management connection. Users may now send a request for an iDigi management connection to the device via SMS from the iDigi Manager Pro interface or web services.
Security - Role-based Access Control and Subnet Restrictions
Created a new "Security" section under "Administration." Account administrators may now assign different levels of access privileges to other users assigned to that account. Account administrators may also restrict access for specific users to only allow access from a network specified by CIDR block rules.
Dia (Device Integration Application) APIs
Added new web services interfaces that coincide with the Dia's iDigi_db presentation. With this feature enabled, iDigi will parse the responses from a gateway running the Dia and store them in the data store. The data is then made available via two new web services APIs: ws/DiaChannelDataFull and ws/DiaChannelDataHistoryFull.