Reference
Glossary
The words the app uses, and exactly what each one means.
When the app or these docs use these words, they mean this.
The shape of the system
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Center | This application — the hub between the networks your devices live on and the systems that consume their data. |
| Left side | Where devices live and messages come from: a Sigfox backend, a ChirpStack or TTN server. |
| Right side | A system that consumes the data — a billing platform, an HTTP endpoint. |
| Source | An integration whose direction is Source (left). |
| Sink | An integration whose direction is Sink (right). |
| Provider | The concrete system type behind an integration: SIGFOX, CHIRPSTACK, TTN, UNA_SU, HTTP, GENERIC. |
| Adapter | The part of the Center that speaks one provider's dialect — authenticating its callbacks, or delivering in its format. Why adding a network is configuration rather than development. |
| Integration | A configured connection to another system: provider, direction, credentials and settings. |
Containers
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Tenant | An organisation. Tenants nest — operator, reseller, end customer — and each sees itself and everything beneath it. |
| Active tenant | The tenant you are currently working in, chosen in the sidebar. Decides what you see and where new records land. |
| Project | A deployment inside a tenant. Devices, integrations, routes and rules each belong to exactly one. |
Devices
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Device | One physical thing, created once, regardless of how many networks it speaks on. |
| Technology binding | One network's identity for a device — a Sigfox device ID and PAC, a LoRaWAN DevEUI and keys. A device may have several. |
| Device profile | A device model: vendor, model, the fields its units need, and the decoder for each radio it speaks. Shared by every device of that model. |
| Field schema | Which keys a device on a profile must or may fill, and whether each is a plain attribute or an encrypted secret. |
| Decoder | Turns payload bytes into named readings. Grammar (declarative), JavaScript (sandboxed), or none. |
| Codec | A decoder that also carries an encoder: encodeDownlink, which turns the commands of a downlink rule into the frame the device receives. One row, two directions. |
| Command | What a downlink means, not its bytes — { name, args }, e.g. valveOpen { value: false }. A rule lists them; the codec's encoder spells them. |
| Downlink queue | A device's list of commands waiting for its next chance to listen. Queued from the device page or the devices list; drained by an encoder rule that includes queued commands; each row goes Queued → Sent, then Acknowledged or Failed once the network reports — or ends Cancelled or Expired. |
| Acknowledged / Failed (downlink) | What becomes of a Sent command. The network reports on the frame — on LoRaWAN the LNS's downlink_ack / downlink_nack / downlink_failed events naming it, on Sigfox the SERVICE_ACKNOWLEDGE callback — and the Center settles the rows: Acknowledged when the device took it, Failed with the network's reason otherwise. |
| Telemetry / meta | The two groups a decoder returns — what the device measured, and facts about the transmission. Kept separate all the way to your sink. |
Data in flight
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Message | One normalised inbound payload. Transient — held until delivered, then discarded. |
| Delivery | One attempt to hand one message to one sink. A message going to three sinks is three deliveries. |
| Idempotency key | A stable key per inbound message, used by your side to recognise a repeat. The Center delivers at least once. |
| Dead letter | A delivery that exhausted its eight attempts. Parked for inspection and replay, not lost. |
| Replay | Re-queueing a dead-lettered delivery. Rebuilt with the current configuration, which is what makes "fix it, then replay" work. |
Routing
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Route | A wire between one source and one sink. With none configured, a project broadcasts to every active sink. |
| Rule | A condition and an action, evaluated top-down before delivery — deliver, drop, respond with a downlink, or wait and correlate. |
| Output structure | The shape delivered to a sink, set per source → sink pair. Full message, raw provider frame, decoded telemetry only, everything decoded, or custom. |
| Downlink | A response travelling back to the device — on Sigfox in the reply to the callback that carried its uplink, on LoRaWAN pushed to the LNS's queue for the device's next receive window. |
Endpoints
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Ingest endpoint | The URL a network POSTs messages to. No Center token — the source's adapter authenticates the payload. |
| Ingest key | The opaque token addressing an endpoint: pk_ for a project, sk_ for a source, dk_ for a device. Unguessable, and rotatable — but a scoping id, not authentication. |
| Ingest slug | An optional readable alias — …/i/<slug> for a project, …/i/s/<slug> for a source. Guessable by design; the adapter still authenticates. |
Provisioning
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Provisioning | Creating or updating a device, device type or callback on the provider, to match the Center's record. |
| Plan / Apply | A dry run showing exactly what would be sent, and the real thing. Apply is gated and idempotent — re-running reconciles rather than duplicating. |
| Contract | On Sigfox, what a device type is allowed to do — including whether it can carry downlinks. Fixed when the device type is created. |
| Activation (OTAA / ABP) | How a LoRaWAN device gets its session. OTAA: it joins over the air with root keys — JoinEUI, AppKey, NwkKey on 1.1 — held on the LNS's Join Server; the usual case. ABP: it already holds a session — DevAddr, NwkSKey, AppSKey — which goes straight to the Network and Application Servers, and there is no join. |
| Adopt | Starting with something that already exists on the network — a Sigfox device or device type, an LNS organization, application or end device: the Center records it as its own and registers nothing again. Adopt one already on the LNS picks an end device of the project's application; its keys stay there. |
Managed credential (sigfox-auto / tts-auto) | A credential the Center minted and stored itself while provisioning a tenant — the Sigfox API user, or the una-center organization API key on The Things Stack. Shown as Managed. The tenant's own calls go out with it, and re-applying the tenant keeps or rotates it; do not edit or delete it by hand. |
| RX1 delay | On LoRaWAN, how long after its uplink a Class A device opens its first receive window (1–15 s). The Center's downlink rides the same uplink only if its push beats it; 5 s is enough, 1 s never is. |
| MAC settings | A LoRaWAN device's radio parameters on the network server — receive windows, adaptive data rate, duty cycle, class timing. Owned from the Center as four layers, tenant → project → profile → device, later wins. |