An Output, herein referred to as an Actuator, is a physical entity on an Octave edge device to which data can be written. Actuators can be built in to the Octave edge device (e.g., the LCD screen on the mangOH Red) or connected via an output pin to an asset (e.g., a GPIO output pin connected to an external servo).

After you configure an actuator for a device, a corresponding Resources will be available for it in Octave. An Actuator's Resource allows you to manage that Actuator (e.g., you can enable voltage on an output pin, set the value of a built-in LCD screen, etc.). The value of an Actuator can be set either temporarily and permanently depending on the method used.

Simple Tutorial to Set and Verify the Voltage for an Output

This section provides a simple tutorial for setting and checking the value of a Resource for a GPIO output pin that has already been configured.

📘

Notes

For this tutorial you will need:

• an Octave edge device that has been configured with a GPIO output pin in Octave.
• a multimeter.

Enabling Output Voltage on a Pin

Follow the steps below to enable output voltage on a pin, using the pin's Resource:

1. Navigate to Build > Device > Resources.
2. Locate and expand io.
3. Under io, locate and expand the Resource corresponding to the output pin configured (e.g., IOT0_GPIO4/).
4. Click the Configured value column for the enable property and set the property to enabled.
5. Click Apply when prompted.

Verifying the Output Voltage

You can verify the voltage on the physical pin using a multimeter:

1. Configure your multimeter to measure voltage levels up to 1.8 or 3.3 VDC.
2. Place the ground probe of the multimeter onto a ground pin (e.g., Pin 38).
3. Place the positive probe of the multimeter onto the output pin corresponding to the Resource configured in the previous section.
4. Verify that the voltage from the pin shown in the multimeter matches that defined expected for the pin.

Additional Methods to Set Values of Actuators

The following topics describe different methods for "commanding actuators" to set/output values:

• Setting a Value via the User Interface: how to manually output a value to an actuator using the Octave Dashboard.
• Setting a Value from a Cloud Action: how to output a value to an actuator from logic running in the cloud.
• Setting a Value from an Edge Action: how to output a value to an actuator from logic running on the Octave device.
• Setting a Value from an Observation: how to output a value to an actuator in response to an input resource on the Octave device.
• Setting a Value from a REST API Call: how to use the Octave REST API to instruct the Octave-enabled device to output a value to an actuator.