Overview
VACER is a digital method for sending data to CIM's PEAK Platform, bypassing the need for an on-site collector. An advantage of VACER is that it can sometimes be faster to implement since it involves fewer cybersecurity hurdles than installing a physical device on site. However, it also has some drawbacks. CIM cannot dictate the intervals at which the data is sent (normally 15 minutes for a BACER solution, less frequent for VACER), which can compromise the ability to report missing data for specific intervals. Additionally, VACER solution requires more time for the development of new parsers. The main technical requirement for using VACER is that the data must be generated and sent in a consistent file format, as either CSV or Excel documents. At this point XML, JSON, or PDFs are not supported.
Walkthrough
When navigating to Site Manager > Virtual Collectors for the first time, PEAK may say that no virtual collector is found for the site. There is a Create Virtual Collector button in the top right to have PEAK automatically create the collector and begin the process detailed below.
Step 1: Create all the necessary files in the virtual collector. The following information is required for each file:
File type - This refers to the shape or pattern of the data file. Typically a file will use header rows denoting point identifiers, with a timestamp in the first column. The most common difference between each file type is the format of the date and time, so please take extra care for this field. Please see linked samples for each parser or reach out to CIM to obtain them.
File Schedule - This is for (future) reporting of missing data. Accepted schedules are daily, weekly, monthly, and ad-hoc.
File Pattern - This refers to the name of file. PEAK accepts the use of the * wildcard to replace multiple characters similar to regex, mainly to accommodate appended timestamps that occur on files. Due to the aforementioned reporting, best practice is to try and match 1 file pattern to 1 file, otherwise PEAK may believe that data points are missing from one file as they only appear in a second file.
For subsequent steps such as equipment creation and point commissioning, please refer to the common guides that are shared with BACER and VACER. The below features are unique to VACER.
Additional step: Associate files to equipment. This is done either by editing the individual equipment (pencil icon next to the equipment) or in the equipment table via the drop-down menu in the cell.
If the file is header based, transpose the header into a column to copy-paste into Commission Favourites page, utilise drag and drop etc.
A favourite-cloning feature exists for VACER as well. This can copy data mapping tables from 1 equipment to up to all equipment of the same metadata type. The feature allows for deselecting specific favourites per target equipment, for instance if the master equipment used as the template has additional points, then each target equipment can be customised with the checkboxes next to each point under the equipment. Levels and Zones are inherited from the equipment by default, however can also be overridden during the cloning process. The primary limitation is that it assumes point names are identical, so cannot be used if the identifiers include references to the equipment name or similar.
Please reach out to CIM for samples of the existing parser formats.