FAQ
1. Do you offer sensors or devices?
No. Eliona is a platform for managing and controlling your buildings and devices.
2. What devices can be connected to Eliona?
In Eliona, you can integrate all data from devices that are connected via our Connector Apps. We currently support the following Connector Apps: ABB free@home, Akenza, CoffeeCloud, Electricity maps, Exchange-App, Forecast, Glutz, GP Joule, Kentix, KentixONE, Kontakt.io, Localino, Loriot.io, Microsoft 365, myStrom App, Niagara, OpenBOS, ROOMZ, SAML SSO, Signify, Spread Sheet, Stoppuhr, Thingdust, Wetter, Xovis, Xovis People Counter, Zevyy.
The Connectivity as a Service -> Connect Devices to Eliona module also provides the following protocol connections:
Connect devices via Modbus
Connect devices via MQTT – incl. MQTT Edge Nodes (Control Edge)
Connect devices via RESTful
Connect devices via Webhook
Connect devices via Apache Kafka
Connect devices via OPC UA
Additionally, in the main menu under EDGE NODES, you will find:
What are Edge Nodes? – a brief introduction to the concept
EdgeNodes in Eliona -> Set up Control Edge – here you configure and manage your edge nodes to connect even remote field devices and protocols (e.g. BACnet, KNX, MBUS) via an EdgeNode.
3. If a sensor stops working, will I see that in Eliona?
Yes. When setting up the sensor, you set a "Time to inactivity". This means if the system does not receive a signal from the sensor after this time, the sensor is set to "inactive" status. You can view the information about the sensors (including their status) in the "Asset Management" menu item.
4. Can I change my active subscription plan?
All our subscriptions are valid for one year. During the first three months, you can change your package by writing to [email protected]. After one year, you can renew your existing package or choose a different one.
5. What does "Infravolt" mean?
Infravolt is essentially a currency we use to measure resource consumption. Each element has its cost in Infravolt. You can view "the costs" in the "Settings" section, on the "License" tab, in the "Infravolt Consumption" block.
6. How am I informed about changes and new features?
The world keeps turning, and so does Eliona. We notify all our users in the newsletter as soon as a new update is released. You can also find out about upcoming changes in the Changelog chapter.
7. How does the deployment of Eliona work?
The Eliona system can be deployed on any virtual machine or cloud solution. If you provide an SSH connection, the system is set up remotely via "one-click deployment". If you cannot provide an SSH connection, please contact the Eliona support team. We recommend a virtual machine from "Ubuntu 20.04" onwards, as support for older versions (Ubuntu 18.04) is expiring and this can lead to problems.
8. Why do we rely on PostgreSQL instead of NoSQL or Timeseries databases?
Most development teams, including our Eliona developers, work with the huge data pool called Big Data in the smart building provider environment. The extreme flood of time series data is often stored in a NoSQL database for performance reasons, and the meta information in a relational database. Almost all IoT platforms use NoSQL databases. It is clear that each of these databases works differently; operating a polyglot database architecture increases operational and application complexity. At Eliona, we do without a NoSQL database, with the same performance, thus eliminating the increased complexity in operation and configuration challenges.
To ensure excellent scalability of data ingestion rates (time series) and to be able to keep all meta information in a single database, we rely on PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB. This makes it possible to write time series and meta information simultaneously with enormous data throughput. 120,000 data series per second with a massive database size. You could write the energy data for all of Switzerland into Eliona in one minute.
Let's go back and show what is the focus of IoT/Smart Building projects: collecting, analyzing, and reacting to data to improve utility/efficiency, reduce downtime/waste, and offer better services. In other words, we need more than a data store: we also need an easy way to get actionable insights from the data. And this is where SQL comes into play. While it has been fashionable in recent years to denounce SQL and praise NoSQL, SQL is in reality extremely powerful.
Advantages of PostgreSQL
On the market for more than 30 years | Open Source | many addons, plugins and extensions | Web services like RESTful | complex WHERE predicates (supported by secondary indexes) | Aggregations and orders; window functions, libraries with mathematical and statistical functions, etc. | All GEO information - important in the area of localization and tracking - is supplied via PostGIS
If the standard performance of PostgreSQL had to be increased (from 100,000 transactions per second), there is a PostgreSQL enhancement called "TimescaleDB", which can easily compete with InfluxDB.
9. What standardized integration options are available in Eliona?
Eliona REST API.
Eliona App SDK.
MQTT (we deliver an MQTT broker with Eliona, with Eliona itself acting as an MQTT client).
REST Requests (we have the option to configure REST and various requests in the frontend).
10. Why don't I stay logged in to Eliona?
Why am I prompted to log in again after a certain time despite selecting "Stay logged in"?
The "Stay logged in" option normally has a validity period of 8 hours, which is roughly one working day. Its sole purpose is to ensure that a new login is not required within this time with the same browser, in case it or the app has been closed. The limited validity period ensures that security and control over access to Eliona are maintained. After this time has expired, the user must log in again.
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