SCS Sensor Configuration Editor

Maintaining your Physical Inventory

As detailed in the background, keeping your physical inventory up to date is extremely important in terms of metadata and the usefulness of your datasets after they have been archived.  As keeping your physical inventory up to date does not have any noticeable effect on the datasets being collected in real time it is tempting to ignore this completely, please try to avoid the temptation!

 

OMAO has attempted to compile a list covering categories of physical sensing devices and sensors that would be found on a typical research vessel.  This list tries to be holistic based off the common vocabularies found in various fleets (mainly UNOLS) and international standards.  However, we cannot guarantee this is a complete set nor that it is/should be any standard, it is just our take on the current sensors out there.  

 

 

 

When you expand the Physical Device Inventory node in CFE it will group all Physical Devices you have setup into the category you specified they belong to.

 

If a category seems to be missing it is because you have not yet created/assigned a Physical Device to it yet.

 

Be aware, since our list is subject to change we provide the ability for you, as a user, to classify a sensor in the Other category.  If you do so that category will be presented to us for inclusion into the master set and then will be available for all to use.  

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Creating a Physical Device

To add a new Physical Device you can click the Physical Device link under the Add New Item dropdown in the main toolbar, or simply right click on the Physical Device Inventory tree node and choose Create Physical Device.

 

As with other items in CFE a base set of information is required before the object can be created. 

 

For Physical Devices you must supply the type, a display name and a serial number.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Once you have supplied the basics above CFE will automatically add your new item to the appropriate place in the tree and select it for further editing.  The detailed pane will now contain a new and mostly empty form.  Fill out the remaining information the best that you can, any required fields will be checked upon validation if missing or in error.  Don't forget to Save your changes!

 

Editing

As with other CFE items, a Physical Device details pane has two tabs, a Basic and an Advanced.

 

The Basic tab consists of the following fields:

• Description
  • Provide an optional description of this item. 
• System Name
  • System generated name, read only format standard across all SCS systems.  
  • Useful for post-processing data on shore from multiple different sources/vessels.
  • Useful for rotating personnel as each ship will always comply with this format.
  • For a more 'user friendly' name edit the Display Name attribute below
• Display Name
  • User supplied name
  • Can be anything you wish though must be unique (defaults to System Name).
• Device Type
  • The Type of Physical Device being defined.  
  • Changing this will have a domino effect such as moving it in the Physical Inventory tree, changing the default values for Manufacturer, etc.
• Manufacturer
  • The party responsible for creating of this Physical Device
• Model No
  • The model of the instrument
• Serial No
  • The manufacturer supplied serial number of the instrument 
• Location
  • The general location of the instrument (exact location can be specified in the Advanced tab if known)
• Not Calibrated
  • If checked it is noted that this device is not able to be calibrated.
  • If unchecked then this device should be periodically calibrated to keep its data scientific grade
• Latest Calibration
  • If the device is able to be calibrated, this is where you can keep a record of said calibrations
  • You are able to specify when the calibration took place, add any notes of interest and actually upload any related documentation (such as the cal sheets, certs, etc).   
• Latest Test
  • If the device has been tested it can be noted here along with who conducted the test and what results they came up with.
• Installed To
  • If the Physical Device is actually supplying data to SCS you can link those datasets to this specific device by Installing the device to the Sensor Interface.  When you swap a physical sensor out be sure to update this portion of SCS to reflect your changes!

 

 

The Advanced tab consists of the following fields:

• Comment
  • A general comment pertaining to this item
• Keywords
  • Optional tags used to assist with text searches and metadata
• Location Measurement Reference
  • In the event you have a detailed surveyed location for this device this would be the origin point the XYZ offset would be based off of.
• Survey Location
  • The surveyed location relative the the Location Measurement Reference where this device is physically located.
• CD No
  • Sunflower / NOAA inventory ID
• Reference Device Order
  • Sets the priority this device's data streams have relative to other instances in the same category.  For instance, this is how you define your primary GPS vs your secondary GPS, etc.  The lower the number the more preferential it's data feed is (eg your best GPS should be 0, your next best should be 1, etc). 
  • Drag and drop (first column) to change the preferred order.
  • In the event two or more devices have the same reference order they are treated as equals.
  • This is how SCS determines which data source to use when client templates include Reference sourced data.  For instance, instead of explicitly selecting a Latitude and Longitude for an event, you can listen to the reference Lat/Lon.  SCS will automatically provide the best GPS data (based upon Reference Device Order) to the event.  If the primary GPS goes down or QA/QC starts flagging it then SCS will automatically fallback to the next device in the list and continue to supply the best data possible to the event.
  • This property is ignored if the Physical device is not installed to a sensor interface.
• Time Source
  • The source of time used by this device (GNSS devices, NTP servers, local system clock, etc).
• Data External to SCS
  • If checked then this Physical Device is for metadata reference only.  It may be a self-contained system, a backup device sitting on a shelf in the closet (spare GPS) or even being ingested by another system (eg multi-beam, etc).  Even if not part of SCS it can be described here to be included in the overall vessel sensor capabilities as reported and advertised on shore.
  • If unchecked the data should be being actively collected by SCS
• Installed To
  • Similar to the Installed property on the Basic tab, however this instance allows you to manage historic installations.

 

 

 

Removing

To remove a Physical Device simply right click on it in the tree list and choose the Delete option.

 

 

 

Additional Operations / Context Menu

Right clicking in the Physical Device Inventory on a category or Physical Device also presents a variety of operations you can execute. Some are only relevant if conditions are met (eg you cannot paste if you have not yet copied something), most are self explanatory.

 

 

 

 

 

 

You can create a new sensor interface linked to this device.

You can add images associated with the device.

You can build a hierarchy of children (sub-devices) for the device.

You can delete, copy or paste entire devices.

You can immediately go to the sensor interface (if any) consuming the data from this device.

You can also sort children (items appearing inside the node) alphabetically.

 

 

 

 

 

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