Connection Lifecycle

Connection Lifecycle helps you customize the default Online/Offline device statuses and/or add more specific statuses to accurately reflect what's happening with the device's Internet connection at the moment and adjust the dashboards' behavior accordingly.

For context, refer to the Device Connection Lifecycle, which covers key use cases and the underlying processes.

Template "Connection Lifecycle" section

Status Types

Default Statuses

There are two default connection statuses: Online and Offline with a timeout between them. These events can be customized, but can't be deleted.

When device connects to Blynk.Cloud (or transmits data), server immediately captures this and sets the device status to Online.

When device disconnects from the server, timer starts. When timeout is reached, server sets device to Offlinestatus.

Default timeout is set to 1 minute, however, in real life the time when a device is marked 'offline' depends on how exactly device had disconnected. You can read more about various disconnection scenarios here.

Custom Statuses

You can add 2 more custom statuses and timeouts between them. Statuses will be applied automatically one after another based on the timeouts.

One custom status, Inactive, is pre-configured for you by default and can be altered or deleted if not needed. This uses one of the slots for custom statuses.

Let's imagine a device, that sleeps most of the time, but is expected to report data at least once during 24 hours. If the device doesn't report for 3 months, it is considered to be "No longer active".

1. Online status is applied when the device connects to server and successfully reports data.

2. After stage one is over the server captures disconnection and starts the timer. In 5 minutes the server automatically sets the device to Standby status. Your customers will understand that the device is not online, but is operating as expected and won't be concerned about it being Offline or not working. Set up a wait between Online and Standby to 5 minutes.

3. The server is waiting for 24 hours for the device to connect and report data (become Online). If that doesn't happen, the server applies No Data Reported status. This is an indication for you and your customers that something is not working correctly. Set up a wait between Standby and No Data Reported to 24 hours.

4. If there is no signal from the device for 3 months, the server applies No Longer Active status. Set up a wait between No Data Reported and No Longer Active to 3 months.

Settings

General

You can change name of any status and color-code it.

Choose names that are easy to understand. Set the colorcoding and the icon to reflect the nature of the status following known patterns. Online - green, Offline - grey. Be careful with red and orange colors as they can be interpreted as errors.

Notifications

When connection status changes, users can receive emails, SMS, or push notifications. Keep in mind, that notifications can be blocked by the users in smartphone settings.

Settings

Display

• Show event in Notifications - add selected events to the general Notifications & Alerts section in Blynk apps. Access this page from the top menu on the home screen of the app.

Connection Lifecycle events in the notifications section in a mobile app

• Show on Device Timeline - add selected events to the device Timeline of the selected device in apps and Blynk.Console. Access this page from the top menu on the device dashboard in the app or using the Timeline tab of the device dashboard on the web.

Connection Lifecycle events in the device timeline

Notification Limits

To control how often users get notified about specific events you can apply Notification limits.

Limit Period- limits the number of notifications to just one notification for a specified time period. Timer starts when first Event happened and notification sent.

❇️ Example: if you set 1 hour as a limit, end-users will only get one notification within 1 hour after the first event was recorded. No matter how many events are generated by hardware (or API calls) during one hour after that, no notifications will be sent.

Event Counter - notification will be sent only after a number of events was recorded. The counter starts when the first event happened. After the counter value was met, the counter resets to zero.

❇️ Example: if the counter is set to 50 and device sends 100 events, the user would only get 1 notification (every 51st event will trigger the notification).

You can also use Limit period and Event counter together.

❇️ Example: set Limit Period to 1 hour and Event Counter to 5.

• When first event is recorded, the Limit Period timer starts and Event Counter starts

• Device sends 100 events

• When 6th event is logged, a notification is sent because counter value is met

• No more notifications are sent because 1h limit is active

Please note that these notifications contribute to the overall event notification quota.

The current daily limit is 100 events per device. For Enterprise clients, this limit may be adjusted to meet their specific needs.

Custom Event Description

Interactions

Statuses set up in the Connection Lifecycle tab can modify the behavior of the device dashboard UI (except for online event) to provide feedback and avoid unwanted user actions. The following options are available:

• Disable all dashboard widgets - all widgets on device dashboard will be disabled when the status is applied.

App with all widgets disabled

• Disable control widgets - widgets that can accept user input (button, switch, text input, etc.) will be disabled.

Use this option when you don't want users to interact with the device. For example, when the device is offline.

App with control widgets disabled

• Display notification on dashboard open - when users open the device dashboard, a pop up will show up for 3 seconds indicating the state, both on the web and mobile.

• Display notification on interaction - when users try to interact with widgets, a banner will pop up, indicating that the device is in the certain status. You can still interact with widgets and change their state, however, on every interaction you'll get a banner with a warning. This option is the default for all newly created templates.

If the device is Offline, but syncing to the latest server state is implemented, the users will be able to change the parameters, but the changes will be applied when the device goes online.