Ubidots
Low-code application development for the Internet of Things
Turn Devices Into Device Types
It's now possible to create a Device T📈ype directly from an existing device, making it easier to replicate configurations across your fleet. This new capability lets you reuse properties, raw and synthetic variables, tags, and specific settings from a configured device; streamlining deployments and reducing setup time. Perfect for scaling faster, without sacrificing precision.
Learn more.
New Devices pages
We’ve finished introducing design changes in our devices pages, from the general table down to the variable page. These changes not only seek to refresh the appearance of this important section, but also to make actions and workflows smoother and clearer.
New Device Types page
The Device Types page has been updated to not only comply with our new design system, but also to simplify the process of creating a device type by making it more thorough and intuitive. Device Types have long been a fundamental tool to onboard batches of devices with pre-configured variables, properties, and interactions with other tools. Now, using Device Types is even more straightforward than ever.
More Properties for Your Devices
For years, Device Properties have allowed you to add metadata to your Ubidots devices to efficiently organize, recall, and work with data coming from hundreds of different sources. Now, we’ve added two new types of properties for you to further specify your devices:
- JSON: You can use a JSON object as a device property that can then be used as payload in your events.
- Device: You can choose a device to serve as a “global device” that is linked to others through their properties, allowing you to further organize and easily navigate within related devices.
🗳 Export your devices to a CSV file, each with its own Device Token
Device Types: Export your devices to a CSV file, each with its own Device Token plus an improved UI.
After releasing Device tokens, it became important to be able to export the device tokens in a CSV file. Imagine you need to assemble 500 new smart buttons for a food supply company, each one to be delivered to a different restaurant so they can place orders at the push of a button. After configuring these devices in Bulk, you might need to send the Device Type information to the device manufacturing team:
- Restaurant Name: To be printed in the enclosure.
- Restaurant Address: To be printed in the device enclosure.
- Device Label: To be printed in the enclosure as "Device ID".
- Device Token: To be coded in the Device firmware.
Here's a graphical representation of how this would look like:
Having a CSV file with your Device Type information will allow you to easily share it with 3rd parties, such as your electronic assembly provider.
To support this, we also had to refactor the UI of the Device Types, so we now have a place to list all of the Devices pertaining to a Type, as well as a simple way to set a type to a Device by clicking on the "+" icon in the upper right corner:
⚙️ Improved TCP/UDP Ingestion
We had been working on a more efficient and reliable way to ingest device data through TCP and UDP. We're now live with a completely renewed TCP/UDP.
Curious on how to send data using these protocols? Check out the resources below.
🍿 Advanced device filters in devices view
Prior to this feature, it was only possible to filter devices by Organizations in the device list. You can now filter devices based on:
- Name
- Description
- API label
- Create date
- Organization
🔑 Device Tokens: secure your deployments at scale
When growing from hundreds to thousands of devices, it becomes paramount to think about security at scale. While using your account's token is great for quick prototypes and Proof of Concepts, using it across all of your customers would be as insecure as having the same password for all of your online services (email, social media, banking, etc.).
Ubidots' Organizational tokens already provide a first layer of security by allowing you to create tokens for specific sets of devices, segmented by projects, business units or customers. The next step towards safer deployments was then to create an individual token per device.
Device tokens are now generally available to all IoT Entrepreneur plans and above. We look forward to hearing your feedback and use cases in our community and support channels.
🧐 Analyze & transform your data with synthetic variables
You've been there. You've successfully deployed 100 temperature sensors at the client's premises. Data is flowing nicely from device to cloud, and your end-users can see it in real-time. Client is happy. Engineering team is happy. You're about to wrap it up... until someone asks if the temperature can be displayed not only in Celsius but also in Fahrenheit ?.
No need to panic — Ubidots has got you covered. No need to re-flash your firmware a hundred times; just create a synthetic Variable to compute new data:
This data transformation process can also be extended to statistical operations over a time frame (i.e., mean, sum, min, max, count, and more), alleviating excess micro-controller processing or firmware maintenance requirements.
💡📶 Manage thousands of devices with Device Groups
Scaling an IoT solution is not an easy undertaking, but Ubidots makes it easier for you. With Device Groups you can save time by performing batch operations all at once across thousands of devices, such as:
- Adding an entire Device group to an organization
- Creating global events to verify a trigger condition across all devices in a device group.