Introduction

After getting access to an instance of the Ability Platform you probably want to develop something on top of it. However, possibly, you might not know where to start, or maybe you are not even fully aware of the capabilities that the platform offers. This is the right place for you. The next articles in this section are part of the getting-started tutorial series that are meant to explain the fundamental concepts of Ability Platform through a practical project that you can build along and learn in the process.

TIP

This tutorial is created with the latest stable release of Ability Platform in mind. It will most likely also work with older releases of the platform, but it is not guaranteed.

What you are going to learn

The series goes through the following topics:

• Admin Portal - a place to manage your Ability-based solution
• Authentication/Authorization - getting access to Ability APIs
• APIs - using APIs to communicate with the platform
• Modeling - defining your entities
• Ability Edge - connecting devices to the cloud
• Telemetry - sending timeseries data and retrieving it from the cloud

ABB Ability™ Platform Community

If you stumble upon any problems during the tutorial, or need some help with understanding the concepts, feel free to ask about it on the ABB Ability™ Platform Community. The Ability Client Success Team monitors this forum, and will answer all your questions.

The project

The project that we are about to build is going to consist of two parts: a web application and a device.

Web Application

A simple single-page-application that will be integrated with Ability APIs. Building that app should get you familiar with authorization concepts and the most fundamental API endpoints of the platform.

Device

A simulated device will be connected to the cloud through an Ability Edge gateway. The gateway will be running a module that will register the device in the cloud and send time-series telemetry in its name. You will be able to read that data and control the device through the web application mentioned above.

TIP

The full codebase of a finished solution is available at Codebits (accessible only from the ABB network). In the tutorial we will cover every single line of code, so you should be able to succeed without going there. However, you can use it as a reference if something does not work as you'd expect.

Feedback

This tutorial has been prepared for you. If you feel that something is not right with it or you're having difficulties following it, consider leaving a question on the ABB Ability™ Platform Community, or contact us using the email address at the bottom of this page.