app/docs/interface/dashboards.md

# Dashboards and panels

A dashboard is a grid of widgets bound to message names — the same names that
wire the graph. It is its own document rather than a set of nodes, so it reads
across flows without belonging to any of them, and a flow stays the logic it
was.

There is no second tool and no separate deployment. You build the panel next to
the thing feeding it.

## Building one

**Dashboards → New dashboard**, then drag widgets onto the grid from the widget
picker and bind each to a message.

Like flows, dashboards are drafts until you publish. A wall panel reads only
the published version, so a half-arranged page never reaches the wall.

On a phone the dashboard is read, not arranged: the grid stacks to one column
and dragging is off. Picking a widget and editing its settings still works.

## The widgets

### Display

| Widget | Binds to | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| **Value** | anything | a formatted reading with a unit and a precision |
| **Gauge** | `float`, `int` | min, max, unit |
| **Chart** | `float`, `int` | up to five series; see *Two kinds of chart* below |
| **Bar** | `float`, `int` | up to eight readings, a row each, with a scale per row |
| **Icon** | numbers, booleans, weather strings | maps a value onto a glyph |
| **Text** | — | markdown you write; a label, a note, an instruction |
| **Agenda** | `list` | upcoming items, e.g. from a calendar connector |
| **Forecast** | `list` | a short outlook strip |
| **Notification** | `record` | title, body and severity — what an alert channel writes |
| **Clock** | — | the time, in a size a wall can read |

Every widget carries a **title**, and **Show title** decides whether the panel
draws it. Turned off, the tile is just the reading — which is what a row of
gauges under one heading wants. The title is still the widget's name: what a
screen reader calls its controls, and what a published value is labelled with.

### Input

| Widget | Publishes | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| **Button** | a fixed value | one-shot: run it, open it, reset it |
| **Switch** | `bool` | on/off |
| **Slider** | `float`, `int` | min, max, step |
| **Input** | text or a number | free entry |
| **Dropdown** | one of a list | a mode, a scene, a preset |
| **Colour** | `[h, s, v]`, `[r, g, b]` or `"#rrggbb"` | a hue wheel with saturation and brightness, for an RGB fixture |

The colour wheel sends `[h, s, v]` by default — hue 0-360 degrees, saturation
and value 0-100 percent, which is what a DMX encoder expects — and its
**Sends** setting switches that to `[r, g, b]` (0-255 each) or to a
`"#rrggbb"` string, because fixtures differ. The first two bind a `list`
message, the third a `str`.

A control publishes the message it is bound to, exactly as a node would. On the
flow canvas it is drawn as a labelled endpoint feeding the nodes that read it,
so nobody has to guess where the value came from.

### Typed bindings

Widgets are type-checked against the message the same way ports are: a switch
takes a `bool`, a gauge takes a number, an agenda takes a `list`, a
notification takes a `record`. Bind one wrong and the editor says so rather
than drawing nothing. The same table is enforced on the server.

Charts are the exception worth knowing: because identity across five series is
carried by lightness alone, a chart with more than one series always draws a
legend.

## Two kinds of chart

**Live.** Bind up to five messages and the chart draws the engine's own ring
buffer of recent values, extended over the socket as new ones land. Nothing
else is involved. This is what you want for "the last few hours of the living
room".

**Querying.** The chart publishes a *request* — the window and resolution it
wants — exactly as a slider publishes a value, and draws the `series` some flow
answers with. What serves that request is the flow's business: typically a
small Python node that builds a Flux query, an InfluxDB node that runs it, and
another Python node that shapes the rows.

That indirection is the point. The widget never learns which database answered
it, so swapping the store is a change to one flow and nothing else. The answer
also states what it was computed for, so an answer to a different question is
ignored rather than two charts overwriting each other's picture.

## Dashboard settings

Most of what a dashboard carries is a widget: a tile bound to a message. A
handful of things are not, because they belong to the whole surface rather than
to any tile on it — and a screen bolted to a wall has nobody standing at it to
set them.

| Setting | Is | Driven by |
|---|---|---|
| **Look** | `Material` or `Glass` | a `str` message |
| **Theme** | `System`, `Light` or `Dark` | a `str` message |
| **Palette** | the dashboard's colours, in order | a `list` message |
| **Background** | the URL of an image | a `str` message |
| **Touch** | touch friendly on or off | a `bool` message |
| **Lock** | read-only on or off | a `bool` message |

They all work the same way, and both halves are optional:

- **Just a value.** Set Theme to `Dark` and that dashboard is dark wherever it
  is shown, whatever the device or the browser prefers. This costs no flow at
  all, and it is what most wall panels want.
- **Driven by a message.** Pick one in **Driven by** and a flow takes the
  setting over, exactly as it drives a tile. The value you set stays the
  fallback: what the dashboard uses before the first message arrives, and
  whenever the message is silent.

A bound setting is type-checked like a widget binding — a Theme pointed at a
`float` is refused by the editor and by the server — and the panel's credential
is extended to it, so a paired screen may read its own theme message and
nothing further.

There is no schedule field, on purpose. **A schedule is a node publishing to
the bound message**: an `inject` with a cron expression, feeding a `change`
node that maps the hour onto a palette, is the whole of "warmer after sunset" —
and the same channel then serves anything else you want to drive, including
locking a panel down remotely.

### Look

**Material** lays flat, tonal cards on a plain ground. **Glass** floats
translucent tiles over a soft, slowly moving one. They are two complete sets of
components, not two stylesheets — but they are the same dashboard: every widget,
every control and every keystroke behaves identically, so switching look never
changes what a panel can do.

### Palette

A palette is an ordered list of colours, and **position is the role**:

| # | Role |
|---|---|
| 1 | the ground the dashboard sits on |
| 2 | the surface a widget is |
| 3 | the primary — fills, active controls, the first chart line |
| 4 | the accent — the second chart line |
| 5 | text |
| 6+ | further chart colours |

Paste a [coolors.co](https://coolors.co) link (or a list of hex colours) and the
whole dashboard is recoloured — every widget, the rail and the charts. Leave the
later roles off and they are worked out from the ones you gave, so **three
colours are a whole dashboard**. **Rotate** turns the list when the roles landed
in the wrong order. Text that could not be read on a surface is replaced with
black or white there, so no palette can produce a line nobody can see.

While a palette is set, **Theme is idle**: the first colour is the ground, so
whether the panel reads light or dark is already decided by the palette itself.
Fault and success keep their own colours in every palette — a failure must never
be paintable as a reading.

### Background

An image drawn under the widgets, covering the canvas. It replaces the ground
the Glass look brings with it. Bound to a message, a flow decides the picture.

### Touch

Bigger controls, and nothing that only happens on hover. A phone gets this
anyway, from its own width; a wall panel has no way to say so for itself.

### Lock

Lock is a read-only *surface*, not a permission. The controls stay visible,
stop publishing and read as disabled, and the panel says **Read-only** in the
corner. What a paired screen is allowed to reach is still decided by its own
credential, below.

## Showing one

- `/view/{name}` — a browser tab pointed at one dashboard. Needs an ordinary
  session.
- **Panels** — a named device that pairs instead of logging in. Below.

## Panels: hanging a screen on a wall

A wall tablet has no keyboard, so it pairs.

1. **Dashboards → Panels**, add a panel named after where it hangs, and tick
   the dashboards it shows. More than one and the screen draws a rail to switch
   between them.
2. Point the device's browser at the link the dialog shows. The device then
   displays a six-character code.
3. Type that code into the same panel's **Pair device** field. The line under
   it names what is holding the code — check it is the screen you just hung,
   because approving adopts whatever answered. The screen picks the credential
   up within a few seconds and never asks again.

What the screen holds is not a login. It reaches that panel's published
dashboards and the messages its own widgets read or publish, and nothing else —
a message no tile on it draws is refused in both directions.

The *credential* cannot be made strictly read-only, and that is honest rather
than an oversight: a querying chart publishes its request, and a control on a
panel is the reason you put one there. The dashboard's own **Lock** setting
above stops its controls publishing and can be driven by a flow, which is how
you quieten a screen remotely — but that is the surface behaving, not the
credential being narrowed.

Deleting the panel revokes the credential and the assignment together, which is
how you retire a device and what it showed. Unpairing revokes only the
credential: the panel, its dashboards and their arrangement stay exactly where
they are, and the screen falls back to asking for a new code — which is how you
swap the device out without rebuilding what hangs there.

!!! note "If the link is wrong"

    The pairing link is built from the installation's `FRONTEND_HOST`. If that
    is not the address devices on your network actually reach, fix the setting
    rather than the link: it is the same one password-reset mails and the OAuth
    metadata are built from.

### A screen somewhere you cannot reach

Another building, someone else's network, no route in. An installation
[enrolled with a portal](portal.md) shows a second link,
`https://hub.${DOMAIN}/i/{installation-id}/panel`, and the same three steps
work through it: the portal serves that one page without a session, forwards
the pairing calls down the tunnel, and mints the credential when you approve
the code. The pairing line then reads *via portal*.

The portal names the panel and nothing else. What the panel may read is decided
on the installation, on every call, by the same check a locally paired screen
passes. Two differences: it acts as the account the installation was enrolled
with rather than as whoever approved it, and deleting the panel stops it here
immediately while the portal's copy of the token expires on its own — which is
also why unpairing, which works on a credential this installation signed, does
not reach a remote screen. Revoke that one at the hub.

## See also

- [Payload types](../reference/payload-types.md) — what a widget can bind to
- [Flows, nodes and messages](../concepts/flows.md) — where the names come from
- [Accounts and the portal](portal.md) — reaching all of this from outside