FAQ

Here you will find the answers to the most frequently asked questions.

1. Do you offer sensors or devices? No. Eliona is a platform to manage and control your buildings and devices.

2. What devices can be connected to Eliona? In Eliona you can integrate all data from devices that are compatible with Eliona apps. ADFS, CoffeeCloud, Localino, CWS, Hailo, MS Graph, Renzbox, Signify, Niagara, Xovis PC2S / PC2R, Wayfinding, are apps that can be integrated into Eliona.

3. If a sensor ever stops working, will I see it in Eliona? Yes. You set a "Time to inactivity" when setting up the sensor. This means that if the system does not receive a signal from the sensor after this time, the sensor is set to the "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 [e-mail]. After one year you can renew your existing package or choose another one.

5. What does "Infravolt" mean? Infravolt is virtually a currency with which we measure the consumption of resources. Each element has its cost in infravolts. "The cost" can be viewed in the "Settings" section on the "License" tab in the "Infravolt consumption" block.

6. How will I be informed about the changes and innovations? The world keeps turning, 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 will be deployed remotely using "one-click deployment". If you cannot provide an SSH connection, contact the Eliona support team. We recommend a virtual machine from version "Ubuntu 20.04", as support for older versions (Ubuntu 18.04) is being phased out and this can lead to problems.

8. Why we rely on PostgreSQL instead of NoSQL or Timeseries databases? Most development teams, including our Eliona developers, work in the smart building provider environment on this huge pot of data, called Big Data. For performance reasons, the extreme flood of time series data is often stored in a NoSQL database 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; running a polyglot database architecture increases operational and application complexity. At Eliona, we eliminate the need for a NoSQL database while maintaining the same performance, thus eliminating the increased operational complexity and configuration challenge. To ensure excellent scalability of data acquisition rates (time series) while keeping all meta-information in one database, we rely on PostgreSQL and TimescaleDB. It is possible to write time series and meta information simultaneously with an enormous data throughput. 120,000 data series per second with a huge database size. One could write the energy data of the whole Switzerland in Eliona in one minute. But let's go back and highlight what IoT/SmartBuilding projects focus on: Collecting, analyzing and acting on data to improve utility/efficiency, reduce downtime/waste and provide better services. In other words, we need more than a data store: we also need an easy way to extract actionable insights from the data. And that's where SQL comes in. While it has been fashionable in recent years to denounce SQL and praise NoSQL, the truth is that SQL is extremely powerful. Advantages of PostgreSQL Open source for more than 30 years on the market many addons, plugins and extensions Web services such as RESTful complex WHERE predicates (supported by secondary indexes) aggregations and orders; window functions, libraries of mathematical and statistical functions, etc. All GEO information - important in the area of localization and tracking - is provided by PostGIS. If the standard performance of PostgreSQL needs to be increased (from 100,000 transactions per second), there is a PostgreSQL further development called "TimescaleDB", which can easily compete with InfluxDB.

   

   PostgreSQL
9. What are the standardized integration options in Eliona?

   • Eliona REST API.

   • Eliona App SDK.

   • MQTT (we ship an MQTT broker with Eliona, where Eliona itself acts as an MQTT client).

   • REST Requests (we have the ability to configure REST and various requests in the frontend).

   • Webhooks

10. Why don't I stay registered in Eliona? Why am I asked to log in again after a certain time, despite having selected "Stay logged in"?

    

    Stay logged in

    The "Stay logged in" option normally has a validity period of 8 hours, approximately one working day. It only ensures that no new login is required during 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.