Transcript
Getting Started with PMI View IOS
Welcome to the PMI View IOS Power Monitors Seminar. We’re gonna go ahead and jump right in to the seminar on how to use PMI View IOS, and how to be able to get the most out of your experience on our mobile version of recording, downloading software.
Before you try to connect to any of your recorders to PMI View IOS, we do recommend that your iOS device be fully updated on your iOS version. You can do so by going over to your settings icon, which is a gear icon. Clicking on your settings and then scrolling down, and you should be able to go to general, software update. In here, it’ll check for updates and let you know if you’re up-to-date or not.
You also want to make sure that you have the latest PMI View IOS app. You can do so manually just by searching PMI View on the App Store, and that’ll take you to the apps page. You’ll know you have an update if the open button says update. Then you’ll have to go ahead and click update. From there, you’ll be able to reopen the app from the App Store. You can see here that it says three weeks ago, we released a new version, which is 1.2.5.
If you want to be able to check what version of PMI View you have, you can do so by going into PMI View, and then going to the account page. It will tell you your version number right above where it says power monitors and where you would log in with your PQ Canvas account.
Updating Your Recorder Firmware
After you have your iOS device and your app updated, the next thing is to make sure that your recorder is actually on the latest firmware. That goes for Bolts, Seekers, Guardian, Tensers, and Linux devices. You’ll be able to make sure that they’re fully updated using either Provision or PMI View for Windows, which is available on the Microsoft Store. Once you’re able to connect with PMI View, you’ll be able to do those things in the iOS version going forward. You could do updates, you can pull logs. You can also log in to your PQ Canvas account here.
Navigating the App
Upon downloading the app, unless you’ve already connected to a device, you’ll see that you won’t really much have anything here in the all page. We have a couple filters for you to be able to quickly scroll through all the devices you guys have. A lot of you have multiple devices deployed in different areas.
You can filter either by what’s nearby, what you’re connecting to manually, which for our Revolution Cell customers, this is how you would connect to your cell revolutions to view live data. Then you have your PQ Canvas filter, as well as recent, so you can figure out which one might have been the last device that you connected to or where was the last location that you drove out to. You have a history of devices that you might have connected to in the past.
Recordings and Templates
From there, you have your recordings tab, your account tab, and your more tab. We’re gonna go straight into the recordings tab. Within the recordings tab, you’ll find you have your list of previously downloaded recordings, as well as templates. In here, you can also create new templates, but you can view and edit the templates that you already have.
If you have a different way that you guys pretty much do your general purpose, let’s say it’s typically 120, 240, you can set your general purpose to always be 120, 240, so that way you can hook up to devices for normal investigations and initialize them quickly and redeploy them. You also have the option to go further as far as advanced configuration. Just like Provision and PQ Canvas, you have the advance options that you can enable and disable depending on your investigation to be able to adjust that net and catch what you’re trying to find in your investigation.
You also have the ability in here to search for templates. If you created a one-off template that you only use once in a while, it’ll be really easy for you to search for it. You can create the custom names for these templates, so that way it’ll be easier for you to filter and find. You can save them under your phone and then upload them also to PQ Canvas for sharing.
Creating a Template
Let’s go ahead and create a template, we’ll say IFL just for demonstration purposes. Then you’ll select a new template that you wanna base it off of, which is it’s just gonna use that template to copy majority of its settings over from. We’re gonna go ahead and select general purpose, and you can see here again, we are in the IFL template with all the advanced options. From here, you can click done, and then you’ll see that it pops up under a separate category called your templates. Now you also have an added filter for you to be able to filter through.
Web Sync
You can do the same thing on your recordings. You can search via file names, and then you can also from here, web sync. Web sync is how you would transfer your recording from an iOS device to a computer if you don’t, for example, have a PQ Canvas account or for whatever reason you can’t connect to PQ Canvas. You just gotta make sure that your iOS device is on the same network as the PC that you wanna transfer said recording to. Then you would open up your web browser, type in this address, and then you would have access to the templates and recording files that are on that device that you downloaded.
Account Page and PQ Canvas
From there, we will now make our way over to the account page. This is where you’re going to log into your PQ Canvas account. This is gonna enable back and forth syncing of files, templates, initialization settings, graphs. Things like that, that you might have ran on PQ Canvas, you’ll be able to pull down on the fly.
Offline Functionality
One of the biggest concerns that we hear customers voice as far as the iOS device is cell service, because we have a lot of customers that do power quality investigations out in maybe remote locations or areas where cell signal or connectivity is spotty. The good thing about this app is that it is not dependent on cell service.
What I mean by that is, if you’re connecting to a recorder that’s nearby, let’s say you’re connecting to your Bolt, your Guardian, or your Seeker that’s maybe 50 feet away at the customer’s meter base, but you don’t have cell signal to upload that recording to the cloud. What you would do is connect to it as normal and then download your recording, and as long as you’re logged into your PQ Canvas account on your app, it’s gonna keep that recording pending until you hit phone signal again.
You can download the recording, get the successful recording download confirmation screen, pack up your recording device and then get in your truck and start driving, and the moment that it picks up cell phone signal, it’ll start the upload to PQ Canvas. So you don’t have to worry about waiting to be able to get that recording to someone or to whoever has to see it.
More Options
Recorder Updates
Moving along, in the more options, you’ll see this is where you have your recorder updates. In here, PMIView iOS will check with what’s available on our server and then make sure that you have the most recent available for each one of our recorders downloaded onto your equipment. Due to the fact that you might be facing signal or connectivity challenges in the field, we want you to be able to still update the recorder if you can get connected to it and not create another roadblock for you to be able to not communicate with it.
Calibration Certificates
Where we have recorder updates, here you can also view your calibration certificates live. No longer do you have to carry around the little booklet that used to come with the Revolutions or Eagles to certify the calibration of the metering equipment or recording equipment to the customer. You can go here on the app and you can type in a serial number.
It’s gonna find the certificate. I can either save or I can preview. Let’s go ahead and preview and this is gonna pull up the calibration certificate for your specific recorder and the date it was validated, along with the results, and you can share this format with the client as well. It is in a readable format. It explains the whole calibration report along with accuracy test results and compliance test results.
Connecting to Devices
If we go back to our device page, you’ll notice that up here you have some adjustable filters, so you can change what devices are being filtered and by what options and you can also hide device icons. But we also have a very important feature over here with the box plus. It’s a square with a plus in it. This is to manually add a device.
If you ever notice that you’re having communication and connectivity issues, you’ve already checked your Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are on, and all your stuff is fully updated, we do recommend that you power cycle the device at least once and then attempt to add this way, especially if you know that you’re using the Bluetooth low energy to create a handshake for the Wi-Fi.
You would just go to find a device and once you get to the screen where it says start scanning to detect nearby devices, you wanna click in the middle of your screen for it to start pinging. If you get to the screen and you see a device over here nearby and that just so happens to be the device you’re trying to connect to, go ahead and click the little circle with an X in it next to the device to remove it from this list and then click in the middle of your screen to start pinging. You’ll know that you’re pinging correctly when you see this little animation that looks like a submarine sonar. All these little dots it’s trying to locate. After you’ve let it scan for a little bit, you’ll usually just see the device pop up here on your screen.
Manual IP Address Connection
We’ll also show you the manual IP address option. This is mainly for customers that have Revolutions, CELL Revolutions, because the Revolutions being binary machine devices, they don’t interact with the newer PMIView, either iOS or Windows, the same way that the Tensor, Seeker, Guardian or Bolt might, because they are of newer generation devices. For your Revolutions, you can go here and enter the IP address and then check the CELL Revolution box and then connect to your Revolution.
If you want to connect directly to a unit in the field that’s a Linux Backbone based device, again, Guardian, Seeker, Tensor, Bolt, you can enter the IP address here. Make sure that you have the CELL Revolution box unchecked and then click more options and make sure you have SSL enabled. Then you’ll just click done and your connection should pop up here under manual.
Live Data and Device Interaction
While being connected to a device, you can see a lot of different things, like live data. You can verify that it’s hooked up correctly. You can also initialize it. You can download the recording. You could view firmware, super cap charge, current range, things like that that were available to you on the fly via PQ Canvas before.
Going in here, we can see that you have your account selection screen. It’s gonna ask you what account you want to go into. Then from there, I can see all of my PQ Canvas devices available on the app itself as well. As long as you have cell signal, the app will be able to pull a fresh list of the devices that are online.
We can see here that the Bolt is showing up as a PQ device, and this is what you would call your device screen. On this page, you will see all your different options to interact with the recorder. It’ll tell you what connection type you’re currently using to connect to said recorder, along with a live animation indicating that the stream of data is flowing, as well as the serial number.
If you click up here at the top, you have your information button, which gives you stuff like the firmware version, the current range, the hookup type, frequency the unit’s currently seeing, as well as the battery levels. Then for our cell-connected recorders, there’s a tab for cell information and cell data.
Live Meter and Waveforms
Here, you’ll be able to inspect the settings, download the recording, send new recordings, live data like waveform, harmonics vector, and the harmonic meter strip chart. We can go ahead and click on that. You can see we’re getting live voltage values here with a timestamp. You can also pause the values and play.
Then we’ll go back into meter. Here, you’ll see across all three channels, we’re seeing 120.5.8-ish. You can also do live phase correction. Let’s say a tech tells me after the fact that he remembers he accidentally swapped A and B phase, which would be one and two. We can go ahead and do that here in the app, and then you can do the same thing here for current.
Additional Device Settings
Then you also have your, I like to call it a hamburger, menu up to the top-right, to the right of the information icon. This is where you’re gonna find more finite settings for the Bolts, settings that you’re not typically gonna be using unless you need to look up the user manual, support, or disable warnings. This is also gonna tell you whether SSL is enabled for your direct connections.
You can also download system logs, which is for troubleshooting purposes. You do have to make sure that you’re logged into your PQ Canvas account for those logs to upload appropriately, but there is a delay. Keep in mind that you have to be logged into PQ Canvas in order to pull any device logs.
Harmonics and Waveform Views
Here, we have the voltage and current screen. You can see that we’re getting live values there, streaming very nicely. You also have a lot of filter options. Let’s say you only wanted to do the odds, the evens, that’s an option. If you wanted to turn off your fundamentals, you can do that as well.
Live waveforms, you can view by channel, by measure, three-phase, line-to-line. You can see that pretty much you have endless functionality on this app, the same way that you did on ProVision, but more mobility. Here, we can look at current or voltage. That’s the live histogram and then waveforms and then phase diagram, voltage and current, or all.
Inspecting and Applying Settings
Inspecting settings: when you pull a setting back from a recorder, that’s gonna help you verify that the setting stuck to the recorder to begin with. You would go about adjusting the template as needed. You can save it or you can apply it.
Then we’ll go into Advanced. Here, you see the auto hookup correction and auto hookup detection. The Bolt is our only recorder that is currently equipped with that. So please do keep that in mind, that that setting should be grayed out for most other recorders. You can turn on event capture, you can turn on triggers, adjust your SBEMA, and you can also change your interval memory and your significant change. We’ll go ahead here and change the report header to Test. Click Done.
Downloading a Recording
Downloading is super simple as well. If we wanted to go ahead and download this recording, we can go to New Recording. We can change template or restart using the same ones. Let’s say we wanna do general purpose. We’ll click Apply. We’ll download the first recording. You can see there, I have a progress bar at the top.
Then we can see that it’s done. Now it’s initializing the recorder, and it’s finished. You can see the progress bar. It’ll give you a confirmation saying your device has started recording. You can even set a reminder on your phone. Then you have the countdown timer at the top, which is indicating that you are having a recording session at the moment.
Viewing Recording Data
Now, if we go back, we can go to our recordings and see that the recording is right here. This would be what your traditional header report would look like. You have everything including the title of the file, which is editable on here, as well as the serial number, going all the way down to when the file was created, what platform was used, the settings, your event table right here, and then the measures that were used, channels that were selected, and your scale factors.
You can click on this data as well. Anything that’s blue is hyperlinkable and takes you to another section of the recording. These, you can see, are your waveforms. If you click on any of these individually, you can see more data of the waveform, and that tells you what it was, its RMS voltage, variation of 4.5%. Just like in ProVision, you can scan around the data on-screen, view different values.
Let’s say we wanted to view this waveform. You can cycle through your waveforms with the two arrows at the bottom to just get a general kind of view of what’s going on. You can also sort these. Then let’s say you wanted to view strip chart or histogram, daily profile. You would just click on which ones you wanna see and move back and forth. You can change your options between them all.
Let’s say we wanted to do apparent power histogram, show values. You can see, it gives you an exact number plus the range on the graph.
Exporting Recordings
While in the recording itself, you’ll also get the options to export recording or rename file. The Export recording button does the same thing as this button. This is where you have your options to either upload manually to PQ Canvas, share via OneDrive, or do the wireless transfer, which is the web sync option.
You can also see here within the PQ section itself, it separates the devices out based on serial numbers and models and their active status, which will be really useful in the field so you don’t have to go all the way through all your different connections to figure out which one is the one that you just deployed at a customer site.
Glossary Feature
Another useful feature that we have included in the app is so that you’re on the fly, let’s say you don’t have any cell service and you need to look up what SBIMA is. That way, you know what that chart means and you know how to determine what information to take back to your customer. We’ve included this glossary with the most commonly used power quality and power terms in general.
You can see here it gives you related concepts. So it’s a damaged region, prohibited. SBIMA means various regions based on input voltage where computer equipment may encounter operational issues. You can read the notes or you can read some details. The details are more factual, gives you actual representations of how we would use it with our software and how we use it here at PMI. The notes is just noteworthy stuff. Like it says, “The SBIMA curve was originally created in the 1970s. The ITIC curve is a modified version of the SBIMA curve created in the 1990s.” Just some quick relevant facts about the term that you’re looking up.
We try to include as much as possible. There will probably be more added onto this over time, but nonetheless, a useful feature for you guys to use out in the field to be able to explain what information you’re looking at.
Q&A
All right, folks. That concludes the seminar for PMI View iOS. We’ll be taking questions now, so if any of you have any questions, please go ahead and put them in the chat now so that we can address them and get you the information that you need.
The backwards CT is a little tricky, because what that does is invert your magnitudes, so there’s no way for you to do that in the software after the fact, but you can pretty much look at the data and determine that because the CTs were set backwards, that it would be the same values, just inverted. You’ll typically get negative values if you set them backwards versus misaligning the phases.
Misaligning the phases afterwards is a little more useful. Let’s say if you set it out for a Y and it was supposed to be a delta, or it was a delta and it was supposed to be a Y, or if they just messed up A and C phase or B and C phase or B and A phase, you can make those adjustments after the fact. Great question though.
If you find that after this seminar you have any other questions, feel free to reach out at support@powermonitors.com or give us a call at 1-800-296-4120. My name is Chris. Thank you for attending the seminar today, and you guys have a good rest of your day.
