V2/Concepts/Overview

Concepts Overview

The Concepts section helps you learn about the parts of the Senfi system and the way Senfi combines data from various silo systems in your building and represent them in the 3D building model as a Digital Twin. This section also helps you obtain a deeper understanding of how Senfi works.

Senfi Solution Architecture

Here's a diagram of Senfi solution architecture showing the high-level outline of Senfi and the components it is built from.

The whole Senfi cloud-based managed monitoring and alerting service is made up of the following components:

3rd Party On-premise Systems

Buildings have on-premise systems such as BMS, Chiller, Fire alarm, Access Control, VMS/CCTV etc., which requires unification for single pane of glass monitoring.

3rd Party Cloud-based Systems

Buildings can also have cloud-based systems such as OpenBlue, Advantech, KONE, Conrac etc. to be unified.

Connectors

Senfi communicates with on-premise and cloud-based systems via Connectors built on standard communications protocol for building automation and control systems such as BACnet, OPC UA, Modbus etc.

Senfi API

The Senfi platform offers an open API to allow integrations with external systems. The core of Senfi' control plane is the API server. The different external systems all communicate with one another through the API server.

BIM Services

Senfi is able to ingest BIM models, 3D models prepared in 3D modelling software, or User drawn models as the basis of the Digital Twin.

Ingestion

Senfi ingest data from external systems and stores them in Senfi cloud via Metrics, Measurements and Assets. These data are then integrated with the 3D model to provide a live Digital Twin.

Workflow

Using the ingested data, Senfi's autonomous intelligence rules engine allows Users to configure workflows to automatically monitor/manage building operations.

Event

Workflows can generate Events, and Users can define the actions (e.g. sending out notifications, commands etc.) to be executed when the event is triggered.

Alarm

For notable events generated, Users can raise them as an alarm to bring attention to the special situation.

Streaming

Senfi supports on-demand streaming of data such as video footage from CCTVs.

Admin

Senfi provides administrative controls for Admin users to manage user access to the data.

Visualization

As a frontend application, Senfi provides Digital Twin application for visualization of the unified systems.

How data is fed into Senfi

The following diagram gives you an overview of how data is processed and stored into Senfi after it is received from Connectors, and how Senfi's rule engine and computed measurement is used to setup automated alerting and actions.

A typical usage follows this pattern:

1. Data is fed to Senfi and ingested.
2. Valid data* is saved.
3. Data can also be used to calculate computed measurements.
4. You can make use of live incoming measurement, computed measurement, or historical measurement in your rules.
5. You can also configure actions to be taken when a rule is evaluated to be true. Or when a rule output goes from true to false. You can make use of webhooks to integrate with your existing systems.

*At any point in time, if the system encounters an unexpected condition or error (eg. due to invalid data), it will generate a log. These log entries can be examined in the CMS under debugger.

What's Next

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• Learn about Site, Building/Blocks/Levels (BBL)