View and manage your devices
The topology map, per-device detail, and how to tell a healthy device from a struggling one.
A topology map is a diagram of what each device is attached to and what it reaches, drawn instead of a flat list. It answers two questions at a glance: which machine a sensor reports for, and whether it is reaching the cloud.
Prerequisites. Signed in. Changing device settings needs the Owner or Administrator role, see Roles and permissions.
The topology map
Go to Devices. The page opens at /devices?select=management with three columns: Asset, Sensor, and Gateway.
Read a row from left to right: the machine, the sensor attached to it, then the Cloud card it reports through. The Cloud card is an endpoint marker rather than a status, so its dot is always green.
Clicking an asset card opens that machine's page. The sensor card opens nothing, even though the cursor changes over it. Device settings live behind Edit Sensor, see Open a device.
A machine with no sensor attached is listed under the map with a red pulsing marker. Contact IoTFlows to tie your sensors to an asset, see Get support.
The device topology map: which machine each sensor is attached to, and whether it is reaching the cloud.
Read the connectivity indicators
Each sensor card carries two indicators: a dot for whether the cloud is hearing from the device, and a Wi-Fi icon for its signal strength. RSSI is received signal strength in dBm. It is negative, and closer to zero is stronger.
Connectivity indicators
| Indicator | Means | Do this |
|---|---|---|
| Green pulsing dot | The device is online and reporting. | Nothing. |
| Gray dot | The device is not reaching the cloud. | Troubleshoot a device that is offline. |
| Wi-Fi icon, three arcs | Stronger than -50 dBm. | Nothing. |
| Wi-Fi icon, two arcs | Between -50 and -60 dBm. | Nothing, but expect it to drop as the plant fills up. |
| Wi-Fi icon, one arc | -60 dBm or weaker. | Move the access point or router closer to the machine. |
| Crossed-out Wi-Fi icon | The device is offline, or it is online and reporting no signal figure. | Read the dot beside it to tell those two apart. |
Treat one arc as the cause before you treat it as a symptom. A device that drops for minutes at a time on weak signal produces downtime that looks like a machine problem: the machine reports stopped, and the stoppage has no cause anyone can name.
The two indicators on a sensor card. This BeamTracker is online, which is the green dot, but it is down to a single arc, and a signal that weak is the thing to treat as a cause.
Device offline but the machine is running? The sensor lost the network, not the machine. The asset card keeps the last state the cloud recorded, so it still reads stopped, and the status bar grays out for the stretch with no data. Gray on the bar is absence of data, not downtime.
Open a device
- Go to Devices.
- Click Edit Sensor at the top right.
- Find the device in the Sensor List dialog.
- Click the gear icon on its row.
BeamTracker opens its own dialog and the two SenseAi devices share another, but all three carry the same detail panel and the same two tabs.
Device detail fields
The panel across the top of the dialog is read-only. It reports what the device is, what network it is on, and the machine it reports for.
| Field | Meaning | Editable | Where it comes from |
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | The device's name. | No | Set by IoTFlows at registration |
| Id | The device's unique identifier. | No | Set by IoTFlows at registration |
| WiFi SSID | The network the device is on right now. | No | Reported by the device |
| IP Address | The device's address on that network. | No | Reported by the device |
| Firmware Version | The firmware the device is running. | No | IoTFlows pushes updates |
| MAC Address | The Wi-Fi radio's hardware address. | No | Reported by the device |
| Publish Metrics Interval min(s) | How often the device sends metrics, in minutes. SenseAi and SenseAi Embedded only. | No | Set by IoTFlows |
| Publish Raw and FFT | Whether the device also sends raw waveform and frequency data. SenseAi and SenseAi Embedded only. | No | Set by IoTFlows |
| Machine Name | The machine this device reports for. | Yes, on the asset | You |
| Machine Id | That machine's identifier. | Yes, on the asset | You |
Firmware Version decides which health view the machine gets. At firmware 5 or above the asset's Health tab shows the advanced machine-health dashboard; below 5 it falls back to the older health view. See Machine health.
Device detail, on a sensor that is offline. Firmware below 5, as here, is why a machine has the older health view rather than the machine-health dashboard.
Rename a device
You cannot. The device Name is set when IoTFlows registers the device, and no field on the dashboard or in either mobile app changes it. Contact IoTFlows to have one changed, see Get support.
What you can rename is the machine. Machine Name is editable on the asset itself, and reports, alerts and exports all carry it rather than the sensor's name, so it is almost always the name you meant. See Add an asset.
Wi-Fi and calibration from here
Two tabs sit under the detail panel. They are the only things in this dialog that change anything.
Calibration tunes what the device reads as running and as stopped, for this one machine. See Calibrate SenseAi and SenseAi Embedded and Calibrate BeamTracker.
Networks moves the device onto a different Wi-Fi network over the connection it already has, with no phone and no trip to the machine. It refuses an offline device, which cannot be told anything over the cloud. See Manage saved Wi-Fi networks.
You do not need the Networks tab for a device that has never been online. That one takes Bluetooth provisioning from the mobile app, see Connect a device to Wi-Fi.
There is no bulk action. Credentials are saved for the whole organization but delivered one device at a time, so a site-wide password change costs one pass through this dialog per device. Work down the Devices list in one sitting.
On mobile
On iOS, open Settings > Devices. Each row shows the device name, the machine it reports for, and Online or Offline beside a green or dark gray light. Tapping through gives the sensitivity and momentum values, the same two the web Calibration tab writes.
Android lists the same devices with the same Online and Offline states and no tap-through to settings. Both apps do Bluetooth Wi-Fi provisioning.
The native device list on iOS. Android shows the same list read-only.
How hardware gets added
You do not add hardware here. IoTFlows claims and registers every device before it ships, and ties it to a machine during onboarding. There is no Add device button on this page.
Contact IoTFlows when you buy a device, move one to a different machine, or need a device name changed, see Get support.
See also
Calibrate a BeamTracker in two halves: the beam values decide what the laser counts as a part, and the downtime filter decides how long a gap between parts may run before the line reads as stopped. Both live in the device's Calibration tab on the dashboard, alongside a live beam view that plots the raw reading against the thresholds you are setting.
Work the chain from power to radio to network to cloud when an IoTFlows device stops reporting: what the signal icon's three levels mean in dBm, why a device that drops several times a day is nearly always a signal problem rather than a failed sensor, and how to tell a dead device from a dead link when a machine reads as stopped.