Docs/Getting started
How SanSignal organizes monitoring data
Understand organizations, projects, sites, instruments, variables, connections, and runs.
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SanSignal is a central workspace for structural health monitoring (SHM) and related instrumentation workflows. It connects field data to the people who configure, review, and use it.
The monitoring hierarchy
| Resource | What it represents |
|---|---|
| Organization | Your company or working organization, including members and shared external connections. |
| Project | A monitoring job with its own sites, instruments, dashboards, teams, and ingestion configuration. |
| Site | A location within a project. Site assignment supports maps, filtering, and access scope. |
| Instrument | A monitored device or data-producing asset, identified by a fixed name and stable ID. |
| Variable | One named channel of an instrument, such as pressure, temperature, or a calculated displacement. |
| Data point | A reading at an instrument timestamp containing ingested variable values. |
An instrument belongs to a site. It can also belong to manual instrument groups and have a logger assignment. A logger represents acquisition or transport hardware and can serve multiple instruments. Grouping a logger does not automatically group its instruments.
Ingested and calculated variables
An ingested variable receives decimal or string values from a source. Its name is the ingestion identity; its alias is a friendlier display label. A calculated variable is a decimal result derived from an equation. Its inputs can include variables on the same instrument, variables on another instrument, and calibration constants.
Configure equations and units explicitly. Labels do not replace the work of mapping the correct source channel or applying the intended conversion.
Connections, pipelines, and runs
An external connection holds organization-level access to an upstream system. A project grant makes a permitted portion available to a project. A pipeline defines how that project imports from the connection.
An Ingest API connection accepts readings from your own systems. A separate Query API connection grants programmatic access to supported developer operations.
A run records a processing operation. Runs help you follow an accepted submission through processing and understand validation or calculation problems.
A typical field workflow
For a tunnel monitoring job, you might create one project, sites for different work areas, and instruments for the installed sensors. A logger collects measurements, FTP or an integration transports them, and variables identify each channel. Calculated variables produce the values your team reviews. Dashboards organize that review, while anomaly definitions record configured condition matches and optionally request email notifications.
Use the quickstart to build this workflow step by step.