DSC-BRAIN USER GUIDE · START HERE
Glossary
Every term the dashboard uses, in plain words.
● verified for 9.0.0 · firmware train 8.2.0.0
● last verified 2026-09-17 · mirrored 2026-09-15
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Desk | A top-level dashboard page: Overview, Climate, Root, Light, Plants, CannaLib, Logs, Alerts, Kit, Twin. Desks are what you are looking at, never which tent. |
| Zone | A room or tent. This rig has the room, the 4×8 tent and the 2×4 tent. Climate, Root, Light and Twin carry a zone strip; the chosen zone rides in the URL as ?zone=. Zones you add yourself, such as a cure fridge, are created under Settings › Zones (Add a zone). |
| Want / Got / Need | Target band / measured value / the gap and what is being done about it. |
| Ladder | The hub's fixed order for asking appliances to act: dehumidifier, humidifier, heater, cooling, heat mat, each gated by reality checks, a failsafe and a minimum off-time. |
| Full Auto | The hub ladder runs and the brain chases Want with fans and demand. The normal state. |
| Manual takeover | An operator switch that freezes automation so every flip is yours. Temporary by design. |
| Fan override | Frees only the fan sliders; demand switches stay brain-owned unless takeover is also on. |
| Failsafe | The hub's emergency state when it no longer trusts its own climate sensors. Everything risky goes off. Always a critical alert; cannot be disabled. |
| Min-off | The minimum time an appliance must stay off before it may be asked again (protects compressors and avoids hunting). Tiles glow blue while in min-off. |
| Demand | The hub's per-appliance please run switch. Sonoff plugs mirror it. |
| Reality gate | A check that an appliance actually did something before the ladder escalates (a dehumidifier that runs without moving RH trips ineffective). |
| Held / HELD | A reading shown at its last good value because the source has gone quiet. Not a live number. |
| Stale | A reading older than the horizon the kit trusts. Control logic treats it as missing. |
| Provenance | Where a number came from: a raw device entity, a computed value, or a catalog. Turn on Provenance mode under Settings › System › Developer to see it. |
| INVENTED row | A settings row for a feature the software understands but the rig cannot do yet. Rendered dashed with a possible with… hint. Hidden unless enabled under Developer. |
| VPD | Vapour pressure deficit in kPa: how hard the air pulls water from a leaf. Computed from temperature and RH with a leaf-to-air offset. |
| DLI | Daily light integral in mol/m²/day. The dashboard's number is an estimate from the fixture's maker PPFD map, canopy distance, dim level and hours. |
| Photoperiod | The lights-on window per tent. The hub keeps the clock; the brain and you set it. |
| Manual light hold | Freezes the 2×4 lamp at its current on/off and brightness and stops the schedule moving it until cleared. |
| Catch-up | The hub making up missed lit hours after an outage or hold. Releasing a hold during catch-up turns the lamp ON. |
| Twin SF1000 | The hub-dimmed lamp output for the 2×4. The 4×8 lamp has no hub output today (open loop). |
| Dry-back | How far substrate moisture falls between irrigations, per crop-steering phase P1–P3. |
| Probe station / idle home | Where a probe sits when it is not in a plant (the soil-test dock). Separate from plant assignment. |
| Roster | The list of plants, up to 10 slots. A plant may have a probe assigned, be detached, or be retired. |
| Stage | Expected grow stage from days since sprout and the flip date, scaled by the strain's catalog flowering time. It is a calendar expectation, not a live plant state. |
| Flip date | The day a photoperiod plant went to 12/12. Stamped automatically at the veg→flower crossing, editable on the plant panel. |
| CannaLib | The strain catalog. Three tiers: online API, on-Pi corpus, curated local YAML. Lights, equipment and nutrients now come from DSC-KitLib and DSC-NuteLib. |
| DSC-KitLib / DSC-NuteLib | The product libraries kept on the Pi: KitLib for lights (with maker PPFD maps) and equipment, NuteLib for nutrients, feed charts and growing media. Updated separately from the brain under Settings › Integrations › Libraries. |
| Journal / grow log | Per-plant, per-tent, per-room and facility (DSC-Core) entries with a frozen sensor snapshot. Grow log is the operational event stream. |
| Reminder | A cadence anchored to the journal (water every 3 days = 3 days since the last water entry). Logging the entry stands it down. |
| Seat | Internal name for an inventory slot (hub, control, pot1, heater…). You will only see it under Settings › Devices. |
| In service | Whether the brain expects a device to report. Out of service stays grey on purpose and never alarms. |
| Role / task (Zigbee, Tuya) | Temperature/humidity sensors are placed: Zone, then Placement (canopy, floor, fan intake …), then an optional Position; the brain stores that as a role such as canopy_4x8. Other devices pick a role directly (leak_floor_room, smoke_room, plug_pump). A task says what happens on a reading (put the tank appliance out of service, raise a flood banner, follow the photoperiod, the Safety cut-off). |
| OOS | Out of service. Applied to appliances by tasks or by you. |
| Canary | Flashing one probe first during a fleet firmware rollout, then the rest, hub last. |
| Surface | The brain and dashboard version (9.0.0). Distinct from the four-part firmware stamp. |
| Reconnect override / pending re-assert | After the hub reconnects during a takeover, the brain records a temporary override (15 min TTL). Once it expires while takeover is still on, Want will not re-assert until takeover clears. |
| Demo mode | A fully simulated kit: no hardware, no LAN writes. The public demo runs it; a banner says so. |
| Lens | A curated Twin view: which layers, camera, look and labels are on. Picked on the Twin desk or opened by a link with ?lens=: Kit, Climate, Air, Light, Root, Power, Plants, Alerts. |
| Safety cut-off | An opt-in task on a bound smoke, gas or CO alarm. When the alarm trips, the heater and heat mat go out of service and the lamp plugs are switched off and held off until you release it (Settings › Devices › Zigbee). Fans, the humidifier, the dehumidifier and hub-dimmed lamps are left alone. |
DSC-Brain user guide · Glossary · this page is edited on the site; the Notion original was retired after the mirror