Bots

The bot is an internal data source emulator. It is intended for testing logic automatons and handlers, checking the work with geozones. Allows to perform prototyping of the created system before starting working with the real device. There are now available bots running on the following protocols: MQTT, Wialon IPS.

Opportunities

Bots have the following features:

• emulation of object movement along the route;
• generating object data manually or using autogeneration.

Bot creation

An already created object can be turned into a bot. To do this, you need to switch the object to bot mode using the “Use as a bot” field when editing an object.

To create a bot from scratch, you need:

1. choose the model that the bot will have. Create a new one if necessary. The model can be adjusted later;
2. create an object in the “Objects” section;
3. in the “Model” field, select the target model using the drop-down list, and fill in other fields at your discretion – their value doesn’t affect the operation of the bot;
4. switch the object to bot mode using the “Use as bot” field.

A bot is also an object. Therefore, all license restrictions affect it, including restrictions on the number of packages per day.

You can visually distinguish an enabled bot from a connected device by looking at the object card in the list of objects. For a bot, an indicator near the time of the last update will be displayed in blue (for a real device – green).

Route emulation

To emulate motion, the used model must contain mandatory parameters with the following identifiers:
lat – handled as latitude;
lon – handled as longitude;
speed – handled as speed.

To emulate the route, you need to run the bot:
1. select the created object (bot) in the list of objects,
2. switch to the “bot” tab,
3. click on the “Start” button.

After starting the bot, the route control panel will become available.

Pressing the “Set route” button allows you to set the beginning and end of the route on the map, after which the system will build the route automatically and offer to save it – the “Save” button.

After saving the route, the following buttons will become available in the route control panel:

	– allows you to swap the start and end of the route;
	– allows you to repeat the route endlessly;
	– allows you to turn on the sequential movement of the object from the beginning to the end and again to the beginning, and the use in conjunction with the repetition of the route allows you to set the nature of the movement as needed;
	– start and stop buttons.

After setting up a suitable motion algorithm, to start emulation, you need to set the motion speed. To do this, you need to specify the speed value in the appropriate field:

Motion emulation won’t work if the speed value generation is active. Only the manual input of the value of this parameter. This is necessary because the bot adjusts the rate of change of coordinates to the speed value selected in the corresponding field.

When the key parameters are configured, you can start the motion emulation using the “Start” button

When emulating motion, you can observe changes in the values of the geo-position in the parameters received from the object, as well as track the movement of the object on the map.

“Start” button  is modified into the button “Pause” after the start of the emulation, which allows you to pause the motion at the current location, unlike the button “Stop” , which stops moving and returns the object to its original position at the start of emulation.

The emulation of the object’s movement can be used to control the operation of the alert script when the object leaves certain geofences. The process of creating a script for controlling a geofence is described in the section geofence control script:

Data generation

The settings for generating parameters are available after starting the bot.

If necessary, in the corresponding field, enter the required data update period (by default, 60 sec):

With active motion emulation, the update period will be automatically changed to the most suitable for the given driving speed.

The data will be transferred to the platform immediately after the bot is launched. The following methods of data generation are provided:

1. Manual input – in this case, the parameter values are set manually using the keyboard or the “up” and “down” arrows in the bot parameter setting field.

2. Automatic generation – in this case, the bot automatically generates the parameter value according to the specified algorithm.

To configure automatic generation, click on the icon , and then select the type of parameter change from the drop-down list – random or linear.

In the first case, the parameter is randomly generated in a given range, which is set by specifying the minimum and maximum values. In the second case the value will be increased by this step with each cycle equal to the update period.

For the changes to take effect, you need to click on the checkmark
To cancel the configured generation, click on the basket

The generated data can be used to test the algorithms of the designed system, for example, developed automatons, generate alerts, handlers.

Additional features

When working with bots, keep in mind that the bot, as an object, is subject to license restrictions. However, after the prototyping stage with the bot is completed, you can’t delete it, but use it as an object when connecting real devices. This can be done using the identifier assigned to the bot to connect to the device, or by changing the identifier of this object.

If a device and a bot using the same identifier are connected at the same time, a conflict will arise between them and data transfer will be complicated, so either the device or the bot must be kept in touch.