Checking data availability with the Timeout module

Sometimes data delivery to your Flows is controlled by the source systems, for example: 

• Data is published on a MQTT broker
• Tag data is pushed through an OPC UA subscription
• A file is added in a watch folder
• A HTTP request is received

In these cases it is often of interest to monitor the expected delivery of data, e.g. “sensor values should be updated every second” or “at least one file should be added each hour”, so that you can get notified when data stops arriving.

The Timeout module is your remedy here. It can monitor that data arrives as you expect, and when not it will fire a message that you can use to take actions, like sending a notification. The Timeout module can operate as a single timer that just checks that any message arrives, but it can also operate with individual timers for each value on a selected property. The latter mode can for example be used to monitor any number of tags from an OPC UA server, as long as they are all expected to deliver data at the same rate. This gives you a really powerful monitoring tool in a single module!