# Asset Types Assets can represent everything including real world moving or stationary physical items, individual sensors or IoT devices, digital data sources, user inputted data forms, calculations or algorithms outputs, AI interfaces and other data related items. For simplicity we divide assets in to two categories, **digital assets** and **physical assets**. ## Digital Assets Digital assets are digital data sources and can be external or internal. All digital and non-digital assets have unique Asset ID number which can be called by Skysens API services. External data sources can be any non-physical data source including but not limited to, external API services, enterprise level systems, external AI models and others. Any external data source with `API`service with `JSON` data format can be integrated to Skysens AgPM. Please see [integrations page](/integrations.md) for more information. Internal digital data sources can be simulated assets or virtual assets. ### Simulated Assets Simulated assets are automatic data generators and acts like a standard IoT devices depending on their configuration in terms of data interval and data fields. They can be used to test dashboard designs, algorithms and integrations.

Simulated Temperature Sensor

### Virtual Assets Virtual assets are virtual data containers and acts like a real assets depending on their designed parameters. Like any asset, virtual assets can be called with their unique ID which supports [Unified Name Space](https://www.hivemq.com/blog/what-is-unified-namespace-uns-iiot-industry-40/) architecture. **They can be used for various reasons:** -Keeping the algorithms or calculations outputs as separate items. For example calculation of average value of some fields and keeping it for scheduled reporting. -Creating a new group of fields which may belong to different assets in to a single asset. -Triggering notifications according to user designed groups and assets, instead of existing assets. -Getting user inputs or constants for advanced calculations, for example, carbon footprint constant or cost calculations. Virtual assets provides easy and flexible way of designing new data which may used to contextualize any topic for AI or other platform services consumption.
There are two types of virtual assets: **-Virtual Value Assets:** These are standard `field` based data assets and keeps all available types of data in their data fields. These type of assets can be configured with [rule engine](/rules-menu.md). **-Virtual Form Assets** Virtual form assets have designed to be used for user inputs or constant keeping. It works similar to other assets but fields names, values and units can be created by user itself instead of service. **These type of assets can be used for various reasons such as:** -Calculating prices or costs. -Tracking carbon footprint or similar enterprise level calculations. -Unit exchange constant and multipliers. In virtual forms, asset detail page is being used to add or remove field inputs.

Virtual Form Asset for Energy Costs

### Physical Assets Physical assets cover all physical data sources such as IoT devices, industrial sensors, gateway devices, machine and equipment, moving assets, locations and other contextualized physical assets. As a digital asset type, these assets being created at [sources](/sources.md)[ page](/sources.md) depending on their data source whether it is a IoT device, industrial device or other data which directed directly from physical device . It can be contextualized with virtual sensor by grouping several different fields together to make physical features in to one asset. --- # Agent Instructions: Querying This Documentation If you need additional information that is not directly available in this page, you can query the documentation dynamically by asking a question. Perform an HTTP GET request on the current page URL with the `ask` query parameter: ``` GET https://docs.skysens.io/asset/asset-types.md?ask= ``` The question should be specific, self-contained, and written in natural language. The response will contain a direct answer to the question and relevant excerpts and sources from the documentation. Use this mechanism when the answer is not explicitly present in the current page, you need clarification or additional context, or you want to retrieve related documentation sections.