Give every instrument a stable identity. Add the location, channels, and relationships that make its readings understandable.
Organize the way your project works.
Use a project for the monitoring job and sites for its physical work areas. A construction program might separate an excavation, a retaining wall, and an adjacent structure. A tunnel project might use sites for different sections or access areas. The structure gives reviewers a recognizable route from the job to its individual instruments.
Manual groups provide another way to collect related assets, such as a sensor family or a review package that crosses site boundaries. Sites and groups can also participate in access scope, so the project structure supports both navigation and the way responsibilities are shared.
Keep field identifiers dependable.
An instrument's name is its stable ingestion identity. Choose it to match the field register and confirm that connected pipelines produce the expected name. Variables represent the individual channels, with separate labels, units, and expected cadence to help people interpret what they see.
A logger represents acquisition or transport hardware and can be associated with several instruments. Keeping the logger relationship separate from the instrument's channels helps an operator understand what shares a collection device without collapsing distinct measurement histories into one asset.
- Instrument: the monitored device or data-producing asset.
- Variable: a measured or calculated channel on that instrument.
- Logger: acquisition or transport hardware associated with instruments.
Navigate from the site to the signal.
A code such as PZ-014 is useful to the person who installed it. A map helps everyone else place it in the project. Save positions for instruments and loggers, and positions or areas for sites, then use Explore to move from geographic context to instrument detail.
SanSignal supports project coordinate reference system configuration. Check the survey system and the stored coordinates together so locations represent the actual installation. A site footprint and an exact instrument position serve different purposes; using both gives reviewers useful context at different scales.
Let the catalog change without losing context.
Monitoring programs evolve as instruments are commissioned, reassigned, or retired. Manage site, logger, group, and location details while keeping the instrument's identity connected to its measurements. Review access grants when an asset moves between sites or groups.
Archive retired instruments to stop new ingestion and calculation while retaining their recorded history. Resolve active calculation dependencies first, and review saved dashboards and anomaly targets after a change. The aim is a useful active catalog alongside a traceable historical record.
Common questions.
Should every logger become an instrument?
Use logger records for acquisition or transport hardware. Measurements belong to variables on instruments. An instrument can have a logger assignment or an explicit No Logger assignment.
How should we organize a large job?
Begin with physical sites that the field team recognizes. Add groups for cross-site review needs, then verify that the resulting site and group grants give each team the intended access.