Contents

1. User Guide
2. Installation

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seeq-clustering is an add-on for Seeq Workbench, which allows for density based clustering of n-dimensional data. Clustering can be supervised (visual) or unsupervised (density based).

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User Guide

seeq-clustering User Guide

Seeq clustering determines cluster structure in data (either by finding regions of high density, or by manual definition) and returns each cluster as a Seeq condition. This can be useful for determining regularly visited regions in parameter space for a set of signals. Why this is important is best understood by analogy. If you want to know how your car's gas mileage is performing over time, a naive way to monitor it is by recording, at the end of every month, your total number of miles driven and total gas used that month. This will give you a measure of how your gas mileage performs over time but is it a good measure of how your car is performing? Gas mileage depends on a variety of factors - outdoor air temperature, number of people in the car, speed etc - so a better measure of how your car is performing is by setting some set of parameters (e.g. 70 degrees, driving between 25 and 30mph with only 1 person in the car) and calculating your gas mileage only when your car is operating in that mode. By examing this gas mileage during known conditions over time, you have a much better measure of how your car is performing.

This is precisely the aim of the clustering addon. In a real process it is more complicated than a car, and it is near impossible to know what set of conditions you should use to specify your monitoring periods (e.g. the 70 degrees, 1 person, from the car example). Clustering helps you with this. It gives you candidate parameter sets - regions in your data where spends a lot of time - so that you can compare how your process is performing in a known, and consistent, parameter space.

When you open the tool, you will be met with two options:

1. Visual (Supervised) - allows you to manually define a cluster boundary in 2-dimensional data
2. Density (Unsupervised) - density based clustering to find clusters in n-dimensional data

You may have to refresh the worksheet once the addon tool says "SUCCESS". If only the conditions are displayed and not the original signals, please simply refresh the page.

Visual (Supervised)

Visual clustering is only applicable to 2-dimensional data. You simply define a region manually, and seeq-clustering will look for datapoints in that region. See an explanation for how it works

Density (Unsupervised)

See explanation of density based parameters for detailed explanations of each input option for cluster definition.

Whichever mode (Visual or Density) you choose, the form of the clusters returned in Seeq will look similar. Happy clustering!

Explanation of Density Based Parameters

Minimum Cluster Size (MCS) - the minimum number of datapoints which much be including in a cluster for it to be classified as a viable cluster. A larger number will produce fewer clusters, each of which then contains more data. See examples

• There are two ways to specify MCS. Either by specifying a value (e.g. "I want my clusters to contain no fewer that 200 points") or by a percent of the total number of data points (e.g. "I want my clusters to contain no less that 5% of the data"). note percent of datapoints is calculated based on Display Range.
• You may (indeed, likely) not know what the total number of datapoints is in your data, so it is recommended to supply both a Percent of data (%) and a Min Cluster Points.
• If both Percent of data (%) and Min Cluster Points are supplied, the default behavior will be to use the larger of the two values for the MCS, i.e.

.

You can override the behavior by checking the Ignore Percent of data? checkbox. Doing so will force mcs = Min Cluster Points

Density Based Examples

To demonstrate how min cluster size impacts the results on the clustering. We will show here two cases (both with Ignore Percent of data? checked)

1. Min Cluster Points = 200

2. Min Cluster Points = 100

Errors:

• ValueError('unable to determine any cluster structure, try reducing mcs, or data size') No cluster structure was observed. The most likely problem is that the min cluster size (MCS) specified is too large or the dataset is too small. Try reducing MCS or increasing the dataset size (i.e. Display Range) slightly.

How it works (Visual)

When you define a region manually in visual based clustering, the algorithm defines a cluster region as follows:

1. Selects the data in the Display Range within that region
2. Finds the center of the selected data
3. Chooses random directions from the center, traverses along that direction until some threshold (usually 90%) of the selected data is "behind" (along that direction), places a boundary point there.

• It also uses the directionality of the walk to specify a "cone" of points which it classifies as "along the walk direction"

4. Does this for many random walk directions to specify a set of contour points, like that shown here:

This allows for a new test point (say, during calculation of Seeq condition) to be compared against the contour points to determine if that new test point is in the cluster or not. Owing to the nature of the random walk, this method is probabilistic and will not capture every member point 100% of the time. This membership definition is only used for visual clustering.

Pseudo code for deterimining cluster membership:

isinCluster(test_point, contour_points)
    Find the direction to the test_point from origin of cluster, r'
    Find the closest direction in the set of contour_points, r
      and corresponding length L
     
    calculate the length along r' to the test_point, L'
   
    if L'<L return true, else return false

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Installation

The backend of seeq-clustering requires Python 3.7 or later. seeq-clustering is compatible with Seeq >=R53.

Dependencies

You will need to install the seeq module with the appropriate version that matches your Seeq server. For more information on the seeq module see seeq at pypi

User Installation Requirements (Seeq Data Lab)

If you want to install seeq-clustering as a Seeq Add-on Tool, you will need:

• Seeq Data Lab (>= R50.5.0, >=R51.1.0, or >=R52.1.0)
• seeq module whose version matches the Seeq server version
• Access (and permissions) to machine running Seeq server
  • Knowledge or where external calculation scripts are located on that machine (see User Installation below)
• Enable Add-on Tools in the Seeq server

User Installation

These installation instructions are for Seeq >= 54, for R53 installation, see here. The latest source code of the project can be found here. The code is published as a courtesy to the user, and it does not imply any obligation for support from the publisher. After ensuring that Add-on tools are enabled in the Seeq server, follow the outlined steps below exactly.

1. Create a new Seeq Data Lab (SDL) project and open the Terminal window
2. Install clustering

pip install seeq-clustering

or manually download the last .whl file from GitHub. Upload this to file to your SDL project, and install it:

pip install <whl_file_name>

3. Install the add-on tool

python -m seeq.addons.clustering

and follow the instructions when prompted. ("Username or Access Key" is what you use to log in to Seeq. "Password" is your password for logging into Seeq.)

There are additional Options for the addon installation. These include --users and --groups. These can be used to change permissions for the addon tool. For example to give permission to users me and you one would install the addon with as:

python -m seeq.addons.clustering --users me you

4. Manually download the two files (Basic.py and config_ext_calc.py) from the external-calc folder. Ignore the files Clustering.py and _Clustering_config.py. Those are used for earlier Seeq version installations.

5. Navigate to the external calculation folder on the machine where Seeq server is running, (typically 'C:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/' or similar) and create a new folder called ClusteringCalc.

6. Move the two downloaded files (Basic.py and config_ext_calc.py) into your newly created /ClusteringCalc/ folder.

7. In command line on the maching running Seeq (not seeq data lab terminal), navigate to the location of the files you just added (using the example from above): cd C:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/ClusteringCalc

8. Configure the location (on machine running Seeq Server) where clustering models will be stored. To do this, run python config_ext_calc.py clusteringModelsPath

If you are unable to run python config_ext_calc.py (e.g. if you do not have python installed on the Seeq server host machine), see manual instructions

The default is to store the models in the same location as dir as Clustering.py, i.e. D:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/ in this example. If you wish to store your models elsewhere, and you have the required permissions Assuming you have permissions to access the path, this can be done by running python config_ext_calc.py clusteringModelsPath <yourpathhere>

9. Follow the instructions in external-calc readme (typically located ~/D:/ProgramData/Seeq/data/plugins/external-calculation/python/readme.html) to install hdbscan. Here is an exceprt from the readme, explaining how to do this:

   Installation of additional libraries can be done by executing the following steps:

   Stop Seeq if already started

   You may stop seeq by using the Seeq Workbench.

   Install the new Python module(s)

   Go to the place where Seeq Server is installed (usually C:\Program Files\Seeq Server) and run seeqprompt.bat

   This will open a new cmd window and will setup the Python environment for the next commands.

   To install your own Python libraries, run in this window (seeqprompt window) the following command:

   python -m pip install -U hdbscan -t plugins\lib\python3
   ### if you need to install additional packages, e.g. seeq, replace hdbscan with <packagename>
   

   where hdbscan is the name of the module we wish to install.

   Check and repair permissions

   If you run seeq as a service you will need to go to c:\ProgramData\Seeq\data\plugins\lib, select python3 folder, press right mouse, go to Properties , select Security tab, press Advanced, mark checkbox "Replace all child object permissions ..." press Apply, then Yes and then OK.

   Start Seeq

   Once you've finished these steps the newly installed module may be used in your external-calculation Python scripts.

If you run into an error in installation of hdbscan see note

To confirm that the external calculation has been installed correctly, in Seeq Workbench ensure that create a new formula and search for cluster. You should see the following:

If you run into errors, please open an issue

R53 Installation

These are the installation instructions for R53.

The latest source code of the project can be found here. The code is published as a courtesy to the user, and it does not imply any obligation for support from the publisher. After ensuring that Add-on tools are enabled in the Seeq server, follow the outlined steps below exactly.

1. Create a new Seeq Data Lab project and open the Terminal window
2. Install clustering

pip install seeq-clustering

or manually download the last .whl file from GitHub. Upload this to file to your SDL project, and install it:

pip install <whl_file_name>

3. Manually download the two files (Clustering.py and _Clustering_config.py) from the external-calc folder

4. Navigate to the external calculation folder on the machine where Seeq server is running, (typically 'C:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/' or similar). Move the two files you just downloaded (Clustering.py and _Clustering_config.py) to this folder.

5. In command line on the computer or server running Seeq (not seeq data lab terminal), navigate to the external calculation python folder (using the example from above): cd D:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/

6. Configure the location (on machine running Seeq Server) where clustering models will be stored. Run python _Clustering_config.py clusteringModelsPath The default is to store the models in the same location as dir as Clustering.py, i.e. D:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/ in this example. If you wish to store your models elsewhere, and you have the required permissions Assuming you have permissions to access the path, this can be done by running python _Clustering_config.py clusteringModelsPath <yourpathhere>

If you are unable to run python _Clustering_config.py (e.g. if you do not have python installed on the Seeq server host machine), see manual instructions

7. Follow the instructions in external-calc readme (typically located ~/D:/ProgramData/Seeq/data/plugins/external-calculation/python/readme.html) to install hdbscan. Here is an exceprt from the readme, explaining how to do this:

   Installation of additional libraries can be done by executing the following steps:

   Stop Seeq if already started

   You may stop seeq by using the Seeq Workbench.

   Install the new Python module(s)

   Go to the place where Seeq Server is installed (usually C:\Program Files\Seeq Server) and run seeqprompt.bat

   This will open a new cmd window and will setup the Python environment for the next commands.

   To install your own Python libraries, run in this window (seeqprompt window) the following command:

   python -m pip install hdbscan -t plugins\lib\python3
   ### if you need to install additional packages, e.g. seeq, replace hdbscan with <packagename>
   

   where hdbscan is the name of the module we wish to install.

   Check and repair permissions

   If you run seeq as a service you will need to go to c:\ProgramData\Seeq\data\plugins\lib, select python3 folder, press right mouse, go to Properties , select Security tab, press Advanced, mark checkbox "Replace all child object permissions ..." press Apply, then Yes and then OK.

   Start Seeq

   Once you've finished these steps the newly installed module may be used in your external-calculation Python scripts.

If you run into an error in installation of hdbscan see note

8. In any Seeq workbook, retrieve the key of the newly created Clustering.py external calc call. Wait a few moments for it to update, you should see the external-calc script show up (your key will be called Clustering.py:NUMERIC:<your_unique_checksum>):

9. Update your app to point to your unique checksum. Run python -m seeq.addons.clustering.config --script_name <yourkeyhere> where <yourkeyhere> is that which you retrieved previously (from a Seeq workbook), e.g., the complete key: Clustering.py:NUMERIC:q2tYWyXR+cw7

10. Install the add-on tool

python -m seeq.addons.clustering

and follow the instructions when prompted.

There are additional Options for the addon installation. These include --users and --groups. These can be used to change permissions for the addon tool. For example to give permission to users me and you one would install the addon with as:

python -m seeq.addons.clustering --users me you

Troubleshooting Install

Manual external-calc Clustering Config

To manually update the cluster model path, open either Basic.py (>R54) Clustering.py (R53) in a text editor. The top two lines should be (or something similar):

#DO NOT CHANGE THE FOLLOWING LINE OR THIS LINE
wkdir = ''

Manually enter the path where you wish to save the clustering models by updating the wkdir variable (yes, this means ignoring the warning in the first line and YES change line 2. To replicate default behavior, updated wkdir to be the same absolute path as the directory which holds Basic.py, e.g.:

wkdir = 'D:/Seeq/plugins/external-calculation/python/user/ClusteringCalc/'

Ensure that you use / in favor of \.

Errors in hdbscan ext-calc install

If you encounter the error

error: Microsoft Visual C++ 14.0 or greater is required. Get it with "Microsoft C++ Build Tools": https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for hdbscan
Failed to build hdbscan
ERROR: Could not build wheels for hdbscan which use PEP 517 and cannot be installed directly

simply follow the link provided in the error (https://visualstudio.microsoft.com/visual-cpp-build-tools/) and download and install Microsoft C++ Build Tools. NOTE it is highly recommended that you ensure Seeq server is stopped before installing Microsoft C++ Build Tools. Follow the download instructions and install the defaults for Microsoft C++ Build Tools:

You will likely then have to close your command prompt, and rerun seeqprompt.bat before attempting to install hdbscan again (see steps)

Troubleshooting

1. Error SPyRuntimeError: Error pushing "[39575A91-37A5-4461-AC8C-7821B54B4237] {Condition} Cluster 0 01/20/2022, 06:13:12": Failed to write item in batch request: Invalid script reference. Expected: fileName.{py|xlsx|xlam|xlsm}[:functionName]:resultDataType:checkSum at 'externalCalculation', line=1, column=1

This occurs from a change to how external calculations function that occurred after Seeq R54. This can be overridden by (i.e., you can force the R54 usage style):

python -m seeq.addons.clustering._external_calc_override  --override True

If, for some reason you wish to undo this change:

python -m seeq.addons.clustering._external_calc_override --override False

2. Signals do not appear in worksheet after completion.

Wait for the loading to complete (loading bar at the top of the screen has dissappeared). Reload the webpage.

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Development

We welcome new contributors of all experience levels. The Development Guide has detailed information about contributing code, documentation, tests, etc.

Important links

• Official source code repo: https://github.com/seeq12/seeq-clustering
• Issue tracker: https://github.com/seeq12/seeq-clustering/issues

Source code

You can get started by cloning the repository with the command:

git clone git@github.com:seeq12/seeq-clustering.git

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Support

Code related issues (e.g. bugs, feature requests) can be created in the issue tracker

Maintainer: Eric Parsonnet

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Citation

Please cite this work as:

seeq-clustering
Seeq Corporation, 2021
https://github.com/seeq12/seeq-clustering