Akiro User Guide

Akiro Ev

Akiro EV App is a CSMS (Charging station Management system) that allows Charging Points (Devices) operators to manage and supervise operations at Charging stations such as Fixing charging tariffs, Generating reports and remotely managing chargers. Akiro EV Application allows you to create Business Unit (Area) and Sub Business Unit and charging points. It helps us to keep track of these charging points such as the Voltage/Energy Consumed, State of the charging Point, Revenue gained, Number of charges done. Details of each charge that are done by the points are recorded and can be filtered. It comprises additional features such as Asset Hierarchy, Device summary, Multi-tenancy, User Management, Restricted Access based on user permission, Blacklist Devices, Quota Management, Rules Engine, Acknowledgement service etc to facilitate an end-to-end solution.We can generate alerts/ triggers based on the defined rules and have customizable analytics dashboards. Through this document we intend to introduce you to Akiro’s EV application, which provides you the capabilities to connect and keep track of charging points.

Getting started With Akiro

Now that you have logged-in to the application, you can follow the below simple steps to get started.

1. Create Device Credentials

In order to connect your devices to the Broker, you need the access credentials. The Device Credentials are a username and password combination and required to authenticate the devices while connecting with the Broker.

2. Connect your Devices

Connect your Devices with the Broker using the credentials created. You can use any MQTT complaint client of your choice. Refer to the Akiro Client section below for more information.

3. Send and Receive Messages

Once the Devices are connected to the Broker, you can now start exchanging the messages across your devices. You can use our Sandbox feature in the application to subscribe & publish messages to the connected devices/clients via topics. Here topics are the strings that the broker uses to filter messages for each connected client. The topic consists of one or more topic levels. Each topic level is separated by a forward slash (topic level separator).

Feature

Creating device credentials

The credentials required to create a connection with the MQTT Broker. By clicking on the Device Credentials on the left navigation panel, You will see the Manage Device Credentials . You can create one or more Device credentials as shown in the below. Each Device Username has an associated Password and acts as credentials for your devices. The Device Username and Password should be alphanumeric with minimum 6 characters and should not contain any special characters.

You can also edit or delete an existing credentials.

Use the Device Username and Password while connecting your devices to the broker to send and receive messages. You can use one Username and Password combination to connect multiple devices or create new credentials for every device for better security.

Note : In case if you wish to recover a deleted Device Credentials. Please contact our support. support@akiroio.com

Connecting a device (Sandbox)

Once the devices are registered, use the Sandbox option on the left navigation panel to send topic messages to your devices.

Topic

Name of the topic to which the message has to be published. We can have / separate nested levels of topics.

Message

The exact message to be sent to devices. (Akiro does not enforce any structure to the payload. The structure of the payload can be application specific)

QoS

The desired QoS value. Takes 0 (AT MOST ONCE),1 (AT LEAST ONCE) or 2 (EXACTLY ONCE). Akiro confirms that the message has been received based on the QOS with acknowledgement service.

Retain

The messages sent to that topic will be retained so that the new devices that connect to the same topic receive the retained messages by default.
Ex: (Topic : Onboarding , Message: Welcome to Akiro)

Device Username

Select from the list of Device Usernames created using which you would like to send the message.

Device Password

The corresponding password for the selected username
The Publish button sends the message. Every message sent using the sandbox generates a unique message ID using which you can search and check the status of the message as explained in the next section.

Testing the connection

Once the device is Connected successfully , The indicator near the Connection turns green. If disconnected it turns red. We can also try sending a message as explained above to ensure the connection is successful.

Search

You can either search based on your registered device Id or message Id using the Search option in the left nav panel.

Device Search

Get the details of the device’s status, connection type, last connected and disconnected time and whether the connection was a clean session or not. You can also check the messages associated with this device and the corresponding topic details.
We can keep track of messages sent and received between devices if needed by the customer whose details can also be searched and accessed in the below page.

Message Search

Get the details of the status , corresponding topic, dispatched and expiry time of the message sent against the message Id, When the application is registered for the cloud store.

Status can be of any of the following

DISPATCHED : Message is sent to the specified topic.
RECEIVED : Message is received by a Client.
ACKNOWLEDGED : Message acknowledged by the Client upon receiving
EXPIRED : Message sent to a topic but expired before reaching the desired Client(s).
RETRY_COUNT_EXCEEDED : Message sent to a topic, but Number of retries exceeded while trying to send the message to the client(s).


For QoS > 0, the message status can change from DISPATCHED to any other status based on the receive acknowledgement from the Client.

Expiry Time

The time at which the message expires. The expiry interval is a configurable time interval for a message.

Messages sent from the Device

We can also search for the messages that are sent from the device with the message_id if the application is registered for the cloud store.
We can even export the messages as csv file

Dashboard Metrics

We have a Dashboard that displays the status of the EV application. It keeps track of devices and their status. The below dashboard displays the Tile View and Map View of the devices in our EV Application. Here each tile belongs to the device on click it displays the information about the device such as state of the device, Revenue raised, Energy consumed and a graph showing the energy consumed and charges done with respect to the date. We can apply date wise filters to the graph as shown below.
We can see the charger session details that were done in the charging point with respect to the date filtered. Akiro Allows you to apply filters to those session details and export if needed

  • Delivered Messages : No of messages Delivered to the devices.
  • Received Messages : No of messages Received from the devices and sandbox.
  • Message Size : Total size of the messages exchanged in bytes.
  • Online Devices : No of devices currently online and connected.
  • Message Quota : Shows the current applicable quota on the number of messages.
  • Device Stats : Comparative view to know the distribution of online and offline devices.
  • Device Details : 10 most recently connected device list against the last connected time. Click on the device Id to know more details about the device.
  • Topic Stats : Topic vs Subscriber count and Message count.
  • Device Connection Metrics : A time-line view of the Device connection counts against a configurable week and month granularity.

Device Asset Hierarchy

The Asset Hierarchy panel allows you to add details about the device . When a device is onboarded, we can provide the locality of the device. This page shows the hierarchy of devices based on their location. So it becomes easier to visualize and also perform some tasks based on the location in which the devices from a particular locality are involved. Details about the device will be shown on a click in different viewing sections like Device Connection Details, Device Metrics Details, Device Topic Subscription Details. In the Device Metrics Threshold section, you can add some constraints which will be applied to the chosen device metrics and perform some task based on those constraints.

Analytics

Akiro provides a customized analytics page that shows meaningful visualizations of the raw data using user-friendly graphs, tables, and charts. Dashboards and visualizations help the business stakeholders gather key information and trends of a business within a short period. We can customize the dashboard based on the requirements.

Flows

On clicking Flows on the left navigation panel, opens a page with the editor workspace that contains the created flows. The term flow is used to informally describe a single set of connected nodes. A node is the basic building block of a flow.
These flows allow you to create rules and connect them in a logical pattern to build the business logic you want to create for your application.

For more information please visit - Akiro Flows

Order Management

This page lists details of all charging sessions done by the charging points that belong to the application. It has details about the transaction, Payment, Energy consumed and vehicleID.

Zones

Business Unit

Logical Unit / Area that has the charging stations belonging to the application. We can create and manage a Business unit in the Zones panel which is available at the left side. Each Business unit is a logical unit that has Sub Business Unit ( Charging Stations ) which has devices (Charging Points) connected to it.

Charging stations

Charging Stations are the Sub Business Unit that belongs to a unique business unit . We can create and manage charging Stations as shown below.

Assign Users

We can assign Authenticated Users to business units as shown below.

Sparks

Triggers

Triggers are the primary unit to make Schedulers and Actions. Triggers defines the message to be sent to a particular topic.

We can create triggers from the sparks panel available in the menu. The + Trigger button allows you to create triggers with some fields which you need to fill for registering a task. It contains the following fields -

  • Name : Name of the task or trigger.
  • Topic : Name of the topic to which the payload has to be published.
  • QOS : The desired QoS value. Takes 0 (AT MOST ONCE),1 (AT LEAST ONCE) or 2 (EXACTLY ONCE).
  • Payload : The message payload to be sent. (Akiro does not enforce any structure to the payload. The structure of the payload can be application specific).

Schedulers

Scheduler schedules or sends messages to a particular topic defined in the trigger multiple times based on the type of schedule we choose.
The scheduler panel inside the spark menu allows you to make CRUD operations with the scheduler. Here you can schedule or automate a particular trigger and manage them. The + Scheduler button allows you to create schedulers with some fields which you need to fill for scheduling a trigger. It contains the following fields -

  • Name : Name of the scheduler.
  • Trigger : It will provide a list of all the triggers created. You need to choose a trigger from the list which you want to schedule.
  • Schedule Type : Select the type of schedule you want to trigger the task. It has 2 options - Time based and Repeat.
  • Schedule Time : Specify the date and time incase of a Time Bas
  • Repeat Type : Specify the frequency of triggering the task. It can be Daily. This option is only available for the Repeat type schedule.
  • Start Date : Name of the scheduler
  • End Date : Specify the end date till which the trigger will be scheduled. This option is only available for the Repeat type schedule.

Actions

Actions send messages to a predefined topic in the trigger. Unlike scheduler, action sends a message only when the user clicks the action button. We can Edit or Delete the Actions when needed The actions panel inside the sparks menu allows you to create actions . Actions are basically tasks which will run a trigger when clicked on them. You can create and manage the actions on this page. The + Action button allows you to create actions with some fields which you need to fill for creating an action with a trigger.

  • Name : Name of the action.
  • Trigger : It will provide a list of all the triggers created. You need to choose a trigger from the list on which you want to act on.

Security

Security page provides options to manage created devices.

Blacklist

You can Blacklist a device with a blacklist panel available inside the security.The + Add Blacklist Device allows you to add a device needed to be blacklisted where you need to enter the device id at. You can also edit or delete the blocked devices.

Changing Password

You will be able to change the password of your Akiro user , click on your username and use the Change Password option as shown.

Support

Your Feedback and Queries are always addressed please provide your feedback using the below option available on-site or send an email to support@akiroio.com