InfluxDB University Challenge

Show off your InfluxDB skills and have some fun at InfluxDays.

Challenge

Ready for some extra fun at InfluxDays? The InfluxDB University team has designed two challenges so you can show off your InfluxDB knowledge, meet some new people and get a chance to score some special InfluxData swag. One challenge is for beginners and requires no previous InfluxDB experience. The other will be for more advanced users. All are welcome.

Details

The challenge involves a number of InfluxData-related activities so that participants can learn or show off their InfluxDB skills:

  • You will take screenshots of your progress along the way in both challenges. Once you’ve completed the challenge. Send all of your screenshots to [email protected] to submit your entry. Include challenge name (Beginner or Intermediate) in the subject line.
  • To participate in the challenge, join the #influxdb-challenge channel in the InfluxData Community Slack.
  • Contest runs from 8am PT on Monday, October 31 and closes on Friday, November 11 at 5pm PT. Winners will be announced the week of November 14.
  • Good luck and have fun!

Tasks

Beginner Challenge Tasks

  1. In InfluxDB Cloud, load some kind of data into the platform (at a regular interval) like Air Quality Data. Take a screenshot (#1). Here are a few ways you can do it:
    • InfluxDB Template (screenshot of the dashboard)
    • Telegraf (screenshot of data explorer)
    • Annotated CSV or line protocol from the UI (one-time ingest) (screenshot of the UI confirmation). Tip: Data > Load Data
  2. Create a task in the platform. Take a screenshot of the task run log, or Slack notice (#2). Here are a few ways you can do it:
  3. Build a Flux query to join, transform, or spatially map your data. Take a screenshot of the code or visualization (#3). Bonus points for more than one Flux function used. Hint: earthquake_usgs
  4. Create a dashboard to visualize the data. Note: If using a pre-built InfluxDB Template, you must customize to make it unique. Take a screenshot (#4).
  5. Fetch data via favorite coding language. Take a screenshot (#5).

Once you have completed the challenge, please submit your 5 screenshots to [email protected] with the subject line “Beginner Challenge”. After that head on over to the #influxdb-challenge channel and let us know you are done!

Intermediate Challenge Tasks

In this challenge, you will deploy Telegraf to ingest and parse data from an MQTT broker into a local instance of InfluxDB. From there, you will utilize the new Edge Data Replication feature of InfluxDB OSS to send downsampled machine data to InfluxDB Cloud.

Lastly, you will deploy your knowledge of Flux to complete a series of dashboard and task challenges.

You are tasked with helping a local factory monitor 3 factory floor machines. One of the 3 machines intermittently fails. Intermittent machine failures are contributing to delays in product delivery and squishing production margins. The Factory Floor supervisor wants increased visibility both locally and globally of machine statues. They hope you can derive value from the machine data provided to help spot machine failure patterns which will lead to faster maintenance response times.

We have created a demo environment for you on KillerCoda that will deploy InfluxDB OSS in a virtual environment. Note: You will need to create a KillerCoda account to access the training instance. Your virtual instance only lasts 1 hour. Make sure you save all your configs and Flux code locally before a reset.

To start the challenge, simply follow this link and follow the prompts:
https://killercoda.com/influxdata/scenario/influxdays-challenge

From there each part of the challenge will be explained to you in a series of stages. There are a total of 4 stages to complete. You will need to take a screenshot at the end of each stage.

  1. Building a Telegraf config (MQTT -> InfluxDB)
  2. Task creation (Downsampling)
  3. Edge Data Replication (Edge to Cloud)
  4. Flux challenge (transform your raw data).

Once you have completed the challenge, please submit your 4 screenshots to [email protected] with the subject line “Intermediate Challenge”. After that, head on over to the #influxdb-challenge channel and let us know you are done!

FAQ

Can I work with another person as a team?
Of course! We hope people will partner up, as it’s a great way to meet other community members and learn new ways of doing things.

Will there be prizes?
Yes! There will be special InfluxData swag packs for winners.

I’m new to InfluxDB. Can I participate?
Absolutely, we’ve designed the beginner challenge for all InfluxDB skill levels. We’ll also have members of the InfluxData team helping out to provide some tips and tricks along the way. If you’re new to InfluxDB, the starred tasks may not be for you.

Will I need an InfluxDB Cloud account to participate?
You will, but you can sign up for a free account here.

I’m stuck — how do I get help?
Make sure you join the #influxdb-challenge Slack channel in the InfluxData Community Slack to get hints from the Influx team.