I’m also interested in what you’re storing – for example: energy usage, number of widgets built, temperatures? Also, what happens to the data after that?
How do you turn data into information into knowledge or “actionable intelligence”?
Thanks,
-OptoMary
I’m storing a range of data…
Power, voltage, powerfactor, temperature and strings.
The first 4 are in the db so I have a long history of collected data. That way I can go back and see if I am reducing my energy usage or not.
The strings are just for giggles. It will be fun to go back over in the years to come to see what messages have been floating around.
I plan to graph the numbers. I dont work well with just a bunch of numbers scrolling up my monitor. Graphs on the other hand… They make trends a lot simpler to read.
To this end I am working on a universal bit of PHP that will take a database name/table/row and duration and just produce a graph. Nothing fancy, but simple and hopefully robust.
Great question. Looking forward to seeing some answers.
Ben.
Basically store the data as a csv file, makes it more or less universal and it can be changed to virtually anything else later. As with any log, better to have too much data than too little and then kick your self because you didn’t record X or Y data later on, so figure the csv is also the smaller file size with no conversions needed.
Agree on the graphs, mostly use Excel (or Open Office) to plot the data on a PC, mainly because that is what the Customers use. We even use the browsers own CANVAS support for live plots (OK until you move away from the page!). Looked/played with MySQL and jpGraphs for PHP, got it all working but haven’t had the need to use it in anger (yet).
Hi all you database users,
How many of you use OptoDataLink? We have a new version coming soon which supports a wider range of database types. Anyone interested in trying a beta?
-OptoMary
Hi Mary,
I use OptoDataLink and would like to try out the new version.
Thank you,
Mike