Basic terms / What is what
Screen
Navbar
NavBar is Navigation bar on Top of any page. It contains:
Logo/Home button on far left
"NavBar previews" next to Home button. NavBar previews are per-user configurable information, which is always displayed (on any page/subpage)
"NavBar buttons" on right side of the NavBar. They display buttons to different quick items (back, search, home, watchdog, eventlog, carousel, language select ...). Displayed items change depending on current page and user rights
"Menu" on far right of the NavBar. It displays available Menus depending on current page
Dashboard
Dashboard is main landing page of FLOWBOX system. It is configurable and can have different configurable shapes:
honeycomb menu
map
floorplan
realm components
overview panel
SideBar
Side bar is displayed on left side and contains list. It can be list of Realms, Setting items ... - content depending on page, site configuration, access rights.
On the bottom of SideBar toggler (blue) - which toggles narrow or wide display of sidebar. It is also automatically changes based on your browser window size (e.g. narrow on portrait mobile ...)
Main screen
Displays main content / components, graphs ...
System parts
Component
Component is system basic element. There are different types of components in FLOWBOX system:
Device (e.g. sensor, multisensor, electricity meter, water meter …)
Complex device (e.g. photovoltaics inverter, AC unit, cogeneration unit, car charger …)
Virtual device (e.g. virtual meter – adding/subtracing other meters, dew point - calculation from temperature and humidity …)
Gateway (e.g. modbus gateway, DALI gateway, BACnet gateway …)
Visualization (e.g. map, SCADA …)
Graph/analytics (e.g. compare chart, heatmap, Sankey graph …)
Control components (e.g. control button, logic block, if-else command …)
Component always belong to one and only one realm. Its widget can be displayed on different realm panels, however technically it belongs only to one.
Property
Component has multiple properties. Property is information/value, stored for a component.
There are properties for
Information gathered from device (temperature, consumption …)
Component configuration (name, alias, bus identification …)
The properties differ for each component type
Property values can be stored to history database and then visualized (in component widget or other charts)
E.g. electricity meters have properties like voltage_l1, voltage_l12, current_l1, active/reactive power, frequency, cos phi, energy
Realm
Realm is logical group of components
Data point
Each component is counted at least one data point
When a component property is actively used in system or stored in history it is counted as data point
Examples
Temperature/humidity/CO2 sensor
Values not stored in history, not being visualized in system, not used on system logic – consumes 1 DAP
T/H/CO2 stored in historical database – 3 DAPs
T/H/CO2 stored in historical database, these values also visualized in compare chart, SCADA – 3 DAPs (there will be other DAPs for compare chart, SCADA components)
Modbus gateway
Since no values are typically stored in history DB – 1 DAP
Virtual water meter
Calculating and storing to history consumption, actual flow and money from 5 input water meters – 3 DAPs.
Compare chart
Visualizing 10 properties from different components – 1 DAP (it has no own history records, only visualize from others)