What are sensorProbe+ Virtual Sensors?

Virtual Sensors can be a very powerful tool in your sensorProbe+ environmental monitoring system. Each sensorProbe+ comes with a number of free virtual sensors and additional virtual sensor packs can be purchased as required.
Virtual sensors can be configured for:

• Boolean
• SNMP Get
• Virtual Ping
• Logic
• SNMP Trap Receiver
• Modbus

Virtual Sensor Example

SNMP Get, sensor logic evaluation and ping commands amongst others are all possible using virtual sensors. For example, you could use a sensorProbe+ SP2+ as a probe manager. If you had a SP2+ and multiple sensorProbe devices they could all be monitored, mapped and alerted via the SP2+ device. You can perform SNMP Get commands on a server to monitor memory or CPU load, or you can ping network enabled devices and be alerted if they go offline. Please note: The Virtual Sensor Ping cannot ping an IP address on the VPN network. We’ll explain more about the Virtual Sensors and how to configure them in the Notifications manual.

AKCP Virtual Sensor Configurations

• Boolean: works on the Virtual Sensor by checking the status of, for example 2 to 3 sensors and if the sensors status matches that of the setting, they will return a value of 1.The normal value is 0.
• SNMP Get: with the SNMP Get sensor, you can get a value from any SNMP device. Note that a custom string return value is not supported.
• Virtual Ping: with the Ping sensor, you can set up ping monitoring of a network device or server.
• Logic: the logic Virtual Sensor type uses FlipFlop logic. You can monitor physical sensor statuses with it, and change the Virtual Sensor’s state with the pre-set values for the status of a physical sensor (SET Source Sensor). The logic will ignore all other intermediate physical sensor statuses and only changes the Virtual Sensor’s state back if it exactly matches the specified physical sensor status (RESET SourceSensor) .
• SNMP Trap Receiver: the SNMPTrap Receiver type will check 3 parameters before setting a value for the virtual sensor. These three parameters are the IP Address, the sensor OID and the Trap sub-type.
• Modbus: use a Virtual Sensor (up to 60, 4 devices and 15 sensors on each) to monitor via ModBus using a sensorProbe+ on RS-232, RS-422, RS-485, Ethernet and other communications network protocols. sensorProbe+ supports RS-485 and Ethernet. The Modbus/RTU protocol defines how a ‘master’ device polls one or more ‘slave’ devices to read and write data in real time over RS-232, RS-422, or RS-485 serial data communication. A slave device cannot volunteer information; it must wait to be asked for it. The master will write data to a slave device’s registers, and read data from a slave device’s registers. A register address or register reference is always in the context of the slave‟s registers. Modbus/TCP, an extension of Modbus/RTU, defines how Modbus/RTU and Modbus/ASCII messages are encoded within and transported over TCP/IP-based networks. Modbus/TCP is just as simple to implement and flexible to apply as the original Modbus/RTU. The sensorProbe+ can represent both “master” and “slave” devices and supports both Modbus RTU and Modbus TCP protocols. For example, use the AKCP Power Monitoring Sensor (PMS) to monitor the power related information including Phase Line Voltages, Phase Line Current, Watts, Power Factor and Kwatt or Kilowatt hours. You can also upload a configuration file to use a 3rd party PMS in the PMS UI.

Please ask for a copy of a PDF of the sensorProbe+ Notifications Manual if you need more information on how to setup Virtual Sensors for your device.