MongoDB Data Structure - node.js

Question

I'm a bit of a noob with MongoDB, so would appreciate some help with figuring out the best solution/format/structure in storing some data.
Basically, the data that will be stored will be updated every second with a name, value and timestamp for a certain meter reading.
For example, one possibility is water level and temperature in a tank. The tank will have a name and then the level and temperature will be read and stored every second. Overall, there will be 100's of items (i.e. tanks), each with millions of timestamped values.
From what I've learnt so far (and please correct me if I'm wrong), there are a few options as how to structure the data:
A slightly RDMS approach:
This would consist of two collections, Items and Values
Items : {
_id : "id",
name : "name"
}
Values : {
_id : "id",
item_id : "item_id",
name : "name", // temp or level etc
value : "value",
timestamp : "timestamp"
}
The more document db denormalized method:
This method involves one collection of items each with an array of timestamped values
Items : {
_id : "id",
name : "name"
values : [{
name : "name", // temp or level etc
value : "value",
timestamp : "timestamp"
}]
}
A collection for each item
Save all the values in a collection named after that item.
ItemName : {
_id : "id",
name : "name", // temp or level etc
value : "value",
timestamp : "timestamp"
}
The majority of read queries will be to retrieve the timestamped values for a specified time period of an item (i.e. tank) and display in a graph. And for this, the first option makes more sense to me as I don't want to retrieve the millions of values when querying for a specific item.
Is it even possible to query for values between specific timestamps for option 2?
I will also need to query for a list of items, so maybe a combination of the first and third option with a collection for all the items and then a number of collections to store the values for each of those items?
Any feedback on this is greatly appreciated.

Answer 1

Don't use timestamp if you are not modifying the ObjectId.
As ObjectId itself has time stamp in it.
So you will be saving a lot of memory by it.
MongoDB Id Documentation
In case if you dont require the previous data then you can use update query in MongoDB to update the fields every second instead of storing.
If you want to store the updated data each time then instead of updating store it in flat structure.
{ "_id" : ObjectId("XXXXXX"),
"name" : "ItemName",
"value" : "ValueOfItem"
"created_at" : "timestamp"
}
Edit 1: Added timestamp as per the comments