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What is the Firmcraft IoT Dashboard?
The Firmcraft IoT Dashboard is a web app for your connected equipment. Your devices send readings such as temperature, voltage or energy. The IoT Dashboard stores them, shows them live, draws charts and warns you when something goes out of range.
Key terms
These words appear throughout the dashboard and these docs.
| Term | What it means |
|---|---|
| Device | One piece of equipment that sends its own readings, such as a sensor, an energy meter or a controller. |
| Gateway | A box that collects readings from several pieces of equipment and sends them together. A LoRaWAN application or a Sparkplug B edge node also counts as a gateway. |
| Child device | One piece of equipment behind a gateway. Each child has its own page, its own readings and its own alerts. |
| Metric | One kind of reading, such as temperature or voltage. A device usually reports several. |
| Telemetry | The readings themselves, stored over time. |
| Alert | A warning raised when a metric goes above or below a threshold you set. |
| Payload | The message a device or gateway sends, usually JSON. |
| Broker | The MQTT server your devices publish messages to. The IoT Dashboard's broker is mqtt.firmcraft.in. |
How data reaches the dashboard
- Your device or gateway publishes a message to an MQTT broker, or posts it over HTTPS.
- The IoT Dashboard picks up the message on the topic you told it to watch.
- The IoT Dashboard reads the values out of the message, using the mapping you set up, and stores them.
- The dashboard updates live, and alerts are checked against your thresholds.
A device or gateway is only heard once you've added it in the dashboard. Messages from anything that hasn't been added are ignored.
Device or gateway?
- Choose a device when each piece of equipment connects on its own.
- Choose a gateway when one box sends readings for several pieces of equipment, for example a Modbus gateway reading five energy meters, a LoRaWAN network server, or a Sparkplug B edge node.
Not sure? Read How gateways work.