Devices: classes, ports and placement

The Devices screen lists every device the brain knows, grouped by where it sits. This page explains what each row says, what a device class is, and how the brain learns where each end of a device goes.

Devices is the third item in the main bar, after Today and Spaces and before Issues and Settings. On a phone it sits in the bottom bar. The same screen is also listed under Settings, in the Advanced row, as Devices.

The older Kit desk is still there. Open Settings, then System, and use the link “Kit” in the Tuning card.

Rows are grouped under the name of the space the device serves, in alphabetical order. A device whose place the brain cannot work out goes last, under “Location not known”. It is never filed under a default room.

• Name. A question mark after the name means the name is a guess or only partly known.
• Role. What the device does, such as a fan or a heater. If the brain does not know, the row says “role not known”.
• Stage. One of active, parked, out of service, broken, stored, retired or unknown.
• Timed run. “running now (timed)”, “no timed run”, or “running: not read” when the brain did not answer. See Timed runs.
• Health chip. One chip per device, explained below.
• Run… A link to the device page, at its run controls.

More about health, maintenance and calibration is on Maintenance, calibration, health and snooze.

Every device belongs to a class. A class is a kind of device: a heater, a humidifier, a climate sensor, a grow light. The brain’s catalogue holds 82 classes in 15 groups. The biggest groups are sensors (20), air (10) and climate (9). Water, containers and power have 7 each.

For each class the catalogue records the facts we need from you, the side effects the device has on heat and water, the maintenance it needs, and how long an alert about it may be snoozed. Each class also records a safe state: off, a floor, or hold.

When you add a device by hand, the picker offers the classes you can plug in or wire up. It leaves out places and containers, the DSC hub, panel and probe nodes (they join through the hub), the brain’s own computer and the weather service. See Add a device.

Many devices have two ends: where air or water comes in, and where it goes out. The brain calls each end a port. When you add a device, the brain asks where each port is, as a pick from the places it knows. The questions depend on the class.

A tent, a propagation dome or a temperature-controlled chamber also stands inside a parent place, such as a room. For these the brain asks where they stand.

Placement tells the brain which space each end of a device serves. The planner uses it to work out what a device would change. See The planner.

Places sit inside each other: a tent in a room, a dome in a tent. The brain keeps this as a containment tree. A device’s real surroundings come from where it sits in that tree, so a lamp in a tent inherits what the tent knows. A fact nobody has stated, such as how much light a place gets, stays a visible gap. It is never filled in with a guess.

A name or a role is shown with how the brain came to know it. A name that rests on a guess or an estimate carries a question mark. The words you may see, and how to replace a guess with an answer, are on The model inspector.

Every device moves heat or water somewhere. A heater adds heat and lowers relative humidity. A dehumidifier removes water and adds heat. A humidifier adds water and cools the air it mists into. A lamp turns its power into heat where it hangs. The planner uses these effects so that fixing one reading does not push another out of band.

A device is active, parked, out of service, broken, stored, retired or unknown. Parked, out of service and broken each need a reason you pick. A parked device also says who parked it, the policy or you. A stored or retired device has no open placement.

See also Kit desk: Inventory, Learning, Calibrate and Adding, replacing and retiring devices.

Guide contents  ·  Using the dashboard  ·  What runs today  ·  Digital Stealth Care