Managing instruments
The administrator side of instruments: confirming pending registrations, understanding instrument states, and deactivating instruments.
When a lab operator registers a new instrument from the watcher, it appears in your
workspace as pending and can't upload until you confirm it. This page covers the
admin side; for the operator's end-to-end flow see
Adding an instrument.
Instrument states
| Status | Meaning |
|---|---|
pending | Registered but not yet confirmed. The watcher is blocked from uploading. |
active | Confirmed and accepting uploads. |
inactive | Deactivated; no longer accepting uploads. |
Confirming a pending instrument
Open the Data Hub web app and go to the Instruments page.
Find the instrument with the yellow pending badge.
Click Confirm. The status changes to active and the operator's watcher can
start uploading.
Confirming is admin-only. Under the hood it's a PATCH /api/v1/instruments/:id
that requires the admin role for session callers (watcher and Lambda automation
authenticate with the instruments:write scope instead, so they're unaffected).
See the API reference.
Viewing an instrument
The instrument detail view shows its run count and watcher counts (online / offline), so you can see at a glance whether an instrument is healthy and actively reporting. Watcher health comes from heartbeats; see Managing watchers.
Deactivating an instrument
Set an instrument to inactive when it's decommissioned or temporarily out of
service. Its historical runs and files remain accessible; new uploads are refused
until it's reactivated.
Instrument IDs are permanent: they're the storage key prefix and the system-wide identifier. Deactivate rather than trying to rename or delete an instrument that's been in use.
Related pages
- Managing watchers: the watcher fleet, deregistration, and the upload queue.
- Managing tokens: issue tokens to lab operators.
- Security & permissions: what admins vs. members can do.
Troubleshooting
Fix the watcher by symptom: won't start, files not detected, files not uploading, auto-update never fires, connection errors, and where to find the logs.
Managing watchers
The watcher fleet from the admin side: monitoring health, deregistering watchers, approving manual uploads, and rolling releases across the fleet.