Manage instruments
Confirm pending instruments, read an instrument’s watcher status, watched folder, and file patterns, and edit its name and type.
When a lab operator registers an instrument from the watcher, it appears as pending and cannot upload until you confirm it. Operator-side setup is in Set up an instrument. Retiring and reactivating are in Retire an instrument.
Instrument states
The Instruments page has tabs for active, pending, and retired instruments.
| Status | UI label | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
pending | Pending | Registered but not confirmed. Watchers cannot upload. |
active | Active | Confirmed and accepting uploads. |
inactive | Retired | Deactivated; no new uploads. Historical runs stay browsable. |
Confirm a pending instrument
Open the Data Hub web app and go to Instruments.
Open the Pending tab (or find the yellow pending badge).
Click Confirm. Status becomes active and the operator’s watcher can upload.
Confirming is admin-only for signed-in users. Under the hood it is PATCH /api/v1/instruments/:id. Token automation uses the instruments:write scope instead. See the generated API docs.
Read an instrument’s page
The top of each instrument page shows what you need to tell whether its files will reach Data Hub:
- Watcher status: a badge next to the instrument name. Online means the watcher checked in recently, Offline means it hasn’t, and No Watcher means none has registered. The watcher checks in once a minute, so a watcher that was just restarted can take up to a minute to show as online. Hover over the badge for details.
- Watched folder: the folder the watcher reads from. Hover over it to see which PC it is on.
- File patterns: the patterns the watcher uploads, such as
*.csv.
Files saved anywhere other than the watched folder, such as a shared network drive, don’t appear in Data Hub. Neither do files whose names don’t match a pattern. The folder and patterns come from the watcher’s config on the instrument PC, so change them there with data-hub-watcher config edit; see Watcher configuration.
Watcher health comes from heartbeats; see Manage the watcher fleet.
Edit an instrument
The three-dot menu on an instrument page, and the row menu on the instruments table, hold the admin actions:
- Edit details: change the Display name and the Instrument type
- View watcher: open the watcher registered for this instrument
- Retire or Reactivate: see Retire an instrument
The instrument type decides which processor reads the instrument’s files, including DishCam and Aunty; see Instrument data preprocessing. The instrument ID never changes, because it is the storage key prefix.