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Key concepts

A few terms appear on nearly every page of this help. Learn them once and the rest of Whisker.io™ falls into place. The glossary has the full list.

How Whisker.io's main terms fit together An account (Riverbend Water District) has locations (North Lift Station, Elm Street Water Tower). Each location has hubs and devices, and each device has channels: Wet Well Level, Pump 1 Running, Tower Level. Channels are used by HMI screens, which show one location's channels; dashboards, which can mix channels from any location; and alerts, which watch one channel. Roles decide who can see and change each of these. ACCOUNT LOCATIONS HUBS AND DEVICES CHANNELS USED BY RiverbendWater District North Lift Stationlocation Lift Station Controlsdevice, through a Hub Elm Street Water Towerlocation Tower Level Sensordevice, through a Hub Wet Well Level Pump 1 Running Tower Level HMI screenone location An HMI shows one location's channels over a picture of the site. Dashboardany location A dashboard can mix channels from any of your locations. Alertone channel An alert watches one channel and notifies people when it breaks a rule. Roles decide who can see and change each of these.
An account holds locations; each location has hubs and devices; each device reports channels. HMI screens, dashboards and alerts are all built from channels. Click the diagram to pause or play.

Your equipment

Account: Your company's space in Whisker.io. Everything you own belongs to one account: locations, devices, users, roles, alerts, schedules and dashboards.

Location: A physical site, such as a restaurant, a lift station or a warehouse. Locations appear as markers on the map of your account, and each has its own equipment, HMI screens, alerts, permissions and activity history.

Whisker.Hub™: A gateway: the hardware at your site that talks to the cloud. Your sensor devices report through it.

Whisker.Block™: A D6 Labs sensor or I/O device that reports readings (temperatures, levels, states) through a hub. Sites may also have Sent.io devices, Modbus equipment and smart controllers. Whisker.io treats all of them as devices with channels.

Channel: A single measured or reported value on a device: a temperature, a tank level, a pump run state, a status register. Channels are what you place on HMI screens, graph on dashboards and attach alerts to.

Seeing your data

HMI: A graphical screen belonging to a location: widgets bound to channels, arranged over a photo or diagram of your facility. A location can have any number of HMI screens, each with its own view, modify and remote-command permissions. Some dialogs call an HMI screen a "Nexus HMI Tab"; it is the same thing. See Locations and HMIs.

Dashboard: A board of live gauges and trend graphs assembled from any channels in your account, regardless of location. Each dashboard has its own view and edit roles. See Dashboards.

Alerts

Alert: A rule that watches one channel: notify people when the value passes a threshold (or when the device goes silent), after it has been in that state for a set number of minutes. See How alerts work.

Alert contact: A person, or a service such as an answering service, who receives alert texts, emails or calls. Contacts are separate from users: a contact does not need a login. See Alert contacts.

Schedule group: A set of schedules (for example weekdays 8–5, after hours, weekends and holidays) that decides who is notified when an alert fires, and in what order. See Schedule groups.

Incident: One firing of an alert. People keep being notified until someone acknowledges the incident or the condition clears. See Acknowledging alerts.

People and permissions

User: A login for the web portal and mobile app. See Managing users.

Role: A named group of users, such as Admin, Manager or Operators. Every protected feature in Whisker.io is granted by choosing which role may use it. See Roles and permissions.

What you need

  • A current desktop browser (Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari), or the Whisker.io mobile app.
  • A Whisker.io user account, created by your account administrator.

The web portal also works on phones and tablets for viewing. Editing features such as HMI editing and dashboard management are designed for a desktop screen, and some are hidden on small screens.

Many buttons and tabs are shown only to people who hold the role that grants them. If you don't see a control that this help describes, you most likely don't hold that role: see Roles and permissions, and Troubleshooting for a symptom-by-symptom list.