Reading the dashboard
The dashboard answers one question: is everything all right? This guide explains every part of it, and what to do when something is not.
On this page
The dashboard is the first thing CropWatch shows you, and it answers one question above all others: is everything all right?
Your sensors are grouped by where they are. Each location gets a card of its own, with its sensors inside it, so you read the page site by site rather than sensor by sensor. A sensor with no location set sits under “No location”.
Across the top are a search box and two buttons that change the layout. On a phone the search box is hidden and the sensor cards are chosen for you.
A location card carries three things along its top:
- A dot and a word — how the whole site is doing. The word is the quickest read on the page.
- The location's name — where these sensors are.
- An arrow — opens that location on its own.
Each sensor inside shows its name, its latest readings, and a coloured edge down the left. An air sensor shows temperature and humidity; a water sensor shows a level; a soil sensor shows moisture. The small labels say which is which.
Clicking a sensor card opens “Details”: everything that sensor sent in its last message, and at the bottom “Last Seen”, which is how long ago that was.
Battery level is deliberately not shown anywhere in CropWatch, so a sensor running low will not warn you here. A sensor that falls silent is the sign to look for.
The same four states appear twice over: as a word on a location card, and as the colour of the edge on each sensor card.
- Green — Online. Readings are arriving as expected.
- Amber — Warning. Only on a location: some of its sensors are reporting and some are not. Look inside to see which.
- Red — Offline. Nothing has arrived for longer than it should have.
- Blue — Loading. Either CropWatch is still fetching it, or nothing has ever arrived from it. A newly installed sensor stays blue until its first reading.
Sensors do not report constantly. Each one sends a reading on its own schedule — every ten minutes, every half hour, whatever it was set to. So a gap of twelve minutes is perfectly healthy for a sensor that reports every fifteen.
CropWatch knows each sensor's schedule and turns it red once nothing has arrived for longer than that. If a sensor has no schedule recorded, it allows an hour. You do not have to work out whether a gap is normal; the colour has already done it.
“Last Seen” inside Details counts up from the last message — “7m 05s”, “3h 07m”. The table view shows the same thing as a plain date and time instead.
A location's own page judges this more strictly, on a flat eleven minutes. A slow-reporting sensor can therefore read Offline there while the dashboard still calls it Online. The dashboard is the one that knows each sensor's schedule.
A red edge, “Sensor Error”, or dashes where the numbers should be all mean the same thing: nothing recent has arrived. Open Details and “Last Seen” tells you how long it has been, which is usually the clue.
The usual causes, in the order worth checking:
- The gateway is off or has lost its internet connection. If several sensors went quiet at the same moment, this is almost always why.
- The sensor's battery is flat. One sensor, gone quiet on its own, often means this.
- Something has changed between the sensor and the gateway — a door closed, a vehicle parked, equipment moved.
Alert rules cannot help here. A rule watches readings, so when readings stop it has nothing to look at and stays silent. The dashboard is where a quiet sensor shows up.
Once there are more than a screenful of sensors, use the search box at the top. It matches on location, device name or EUI, so any of these work:
- The sensor's name, such as “Greenhouse 1”.
- The location, such as “North Field”, which brings up everything there.
- The long serial number, if you are holding the sensor and reading the label.
“Table” swaps the cards for a list: Name, Location, Primary, Secondary and Last Updated, one row per sensor.
It is the better view when you have many sensors, when you want them sorted, or when you are printing. “Sensor Cards” brings the cards back, and CropWatch remembers which you chose.
“Primary” and “Secondary” are simply the first and second readings a sensor sends. For an air sensor those are temperature and humidity.
Clicking a sensor opens its own page: the current readings, and a chart of how they have moved over time. Four buttons choose how far back to look — “Today Only”, “Last 24 Hours”, “Last 48 Hours” and “Last 72 Hours”. It opens on Today Only, which is why an early-morning visit can look sparse.
The figures on that page — the highest, the lowest, the average — are worked out for the stretch of time you picked, not for all time. Change the buttons and they change with it.
This is the screen for questions the dashboard cannot answer — whether last night was colder than the one before, whether the humidity always climbs at four in the morning, whether a problem is new.
“No data yet for this device.” means nothing has ever arrived from this sensor. For a sensor that has just been installed, that is expected for the first little while.
Down the left are the other screens:
- Dashboard — this page.
- Locations — your sites and what is installed at each, which is the tidier way in when you have several.
- Rules — being told when a reading crosses a limit. See Creating an alert rule.
- Reports — regular summaries by email. See Creating a report.
- Gateways — the boxes that carry your sensors' readings to the internet.
- A number looks wrong. Open the sensor and look at the chart. One odd reading among normal ones is usually noise; a step change that stays is usually real.
- A card says “No data yet”. Nothing has ever arrived from it. New sensors show this until their first reading.
- Everything went red at once. Look at the gateway rather than the sensors.
- A sensor is missing entirely. It may be at a location you do not have access to. Ask whoever manages your account.
- The dashboard says “No devices”. That is also what a failed load looks like. Refresh the page before concluding anything.
- The page looks out of date. Refresh it. The dashboard shows what had arrived when you opened it.