Glossary

This glossary explains common terms you will encounter while using PRIZM.

A

Aggregate Type

Controls how a widget summarises the data it receives from a device field. You pick one when configuring most widgets. Anything other than Latest also requires a Time Range to be set.

Latest – shows the single most recent value.
Count – counts how many readings were received.
Sum – adds all readings together.
Avg – averages all readings.
Min / Max – shows the lowest or highest reading.

Alert

A rule that watches incoming device data and fires one or more Alert Actions when a condition is met. Alerts are created and managed inside the Blueprint Editor.

Alert Action

What happens when an alert fires. You add one or more actions to every alert:

SMS – sends a text message to a team member.
Email – sends an email to a team member.
HTTP – calls an external URL (useful for integrations).
Notification – shows an in-app notification.

API Key

Found in Settings → Data & Integrations. Copy it to make authenticated requests to the PRIZM Cloud REST API from your own applications. There is one key per company, shared by every employee and every application. Reset Company Key issues a new one and the old key stops working immediately, breaking anything still using it. See Data & Integrations.

B

Blueprint

Your visual logic pipeline, built in the Blueprint Editor. A blueprint is made of Nodes connected by Edges and defines how data is read from sensors, processed, and sent to outputs. When deployed to a Bundle, the blueprint runs on every device in that bundle. You can find your blueprints in the Blueprints sidebar item.

Blueprint Editor

The drag-and-drop canvas for building blueprints. The left panel shows the Prefab library; you drop prefabs onto the canvas as Nodes and wire them together with Edges. Alerts for the blueprint are also configured here.

Blueprint History

A timeline of every saved version of a blueprint. Open it from the History button in the Blueprint Editor. You can preview any past version and revert to it with one click.

Bucket Size (Interval)

Appears in the configuration panel of Graph and Histogram widgets. It controls the width of each time slot on the chart. For example, choosing 1 minute means each point on the chart represents data aggregated over one minute. Options range from 1 second up to 1 year.

Ship

The button in the Blueprint Editor that compiles the current blueprint and opens the deploy dialog. There you select the target Bundle and configure any Peripherals the blueprint uses, then confirm with Save & Deploy.

Bundle

A named group of devices that share one deployed application. You create a bundle, add devices to it, then deploy a Blueprint to it. An application is always deployed to a bundle and never to a single device, so a device that is not in a bundle cannot run one. A device belongs to at most one bundle, and a bundle runs one application at a time — deploying again replaces what is running, and the bundle page keeps the deployment history you can roll back to. See Bundles.

C

Company

Your workspace in PRIZM Cloud. Everything—devices, dashboards, blueprints, employees, and billing—belongs to a company. Switching companies changes all the data you see in the sidebar. Its name and image are set on Settings → Company & Employees. See Settings.

Company ID

Your company’s unique identifier, shown with a copy button beside the Company API Key on Settings → Data & Integrations. Also called the Company Key. It identifies your company in webhook payloads (as companyId) and is what support will ask you for. Unlike the API Key it is not a secret and it never changes. See Data & Integrations.

Connection Quality

A device connectivity-health indicator shown in the device list and logs. Values are Good, Medium, or Poor. It reflects end-to-end delivery quality (device link and cloud processing responsiveness), so a device may still go offline if it sends large data bursts.

Connection Status

The live state badge shown next to every device:

Online – connected and idle.
Running – connected and actively executing a deployed blueprint.
Updating – receiving a new app or configuration.
Updating Firmware – an OTA firmware update is in progress.
Offline – not currently connected.

Credits

The usage currency for your company. Credits are spent by device connectivity — a device consumes 11 credits every 5 minutes while it is Online or Running — and by alert actions that contact people (SMS, email, etc.). You can see your current usage and limit on Settings → Billing. See Devices.

D

Dashboard

A page you build yourself to monitor your devices. A dashboard is made up of one or more Tabs, each containing Widgets. You can pin up to five dashboards to the sidebar for quick access. See Dashboards.

Data Export

Found in Settings → Data & Integrations. Downloads a CSV file of all device field data for a date range you choose. The end date must be after the start date and cannot be in the future, and a range reaching past your Data Retention window returns nothing for the part that has expired. See Data & Integrations.

Data Retention

How long recorded device field data is kept. Five windows are available — 7 days, 30 days, 90 days, 180 days, and 1 year — set in the Set Usage Limits dialog on Settings → Billing. Widgets, webhooks, the REST API, and CSV export can none of them show data older than the window. Each value keeps the retention it had when it arrived and changing the setting never revisits it, so shortening retention destroys nothing and lengthening it recovers nothing. See Billing & Plan.

Deploy

The action of building a Blueprint and pushing it to a Bundle so the devices in that bundle run it. Triggered from the Ship button in the Blueprint Editor.

Device

A physical piece of hardware (for example an ESP32 microcontroller or a Linux computer) registered to your company. Each device appears in the Devices list, shows its Connection Status and Connection Quality, and sends data through Device Fields.

Device Events

This refers to the data (delivered in JSON format) collected by the connected device. It represents the computed data generated through the connections between multiple Prefabs within the blueprint, which is then received by linking to a cloud prefab.

Device Field

A named data channel a device sends values through, identified by its Identifier and defined from the Fields sidebar item. See Device Fields.

Device Log

A timestamped message sent by a device, viewable in the device detail panel. Useful for debugging. Each message has a severity level: Debug, Info, Warn, or Error.

Device Tag

A key-value label attached to a device used to differentiate devices that share the same blueprint (for example company=lg or zone=outdoor). Tags are searchable in the device list and let a single blueprint target devices with specific characteristics.

Devices

The top-level sidebar item where you register and manage every device belonging to your company. See Devices.

E

Edge

The connection line you draw between two nodes in the Blueprint Editor. It carries data from an output handle on one node to an input handle on another.

Employee

A person who is a member of your company. Managed on Settings → Company & Employees, where you invite them by email address as either a User or an Admin — you cannot invite someone as an Owner. Each employee has a Role. See Company & Employees.

F

Fields

The top-level sidebar item where you define every Device Field for your company. See Device Fields.

Firmware Version

The software version currently installed on a device. Shown in the device detail panel. Updates automatically after an OTA firmware update completes.

G

Graph

A dashboard widget that plots one or more device fields as a multi-line chart over time. Configured with a Time Range and Bucket Size (Interval) to control the window and resolution of the data displayed.

H

Hardware Settings

The tab in a device’s Soft AP Mode configuration interface where you map the device’s GPIO pins and switch its built-in modules on or off — cellular, Wi-Fi, status LED, shutdown behaviour, and the I2C, SPI, UART and CAN buses. Changes are stored on the device and take effect on its next boot. See Hardware settings.

I

Interval

The label shown in the Graph and Histogram widget configuration panels for the Bucket Size setting. See Bucket Size.

M

Max Credits

The credit limit for your company per billing cycle. When your usage reaches this number, credit-consuming actions stop until the Reset Date — including device connectivity, so connected devices disconnect and stop reporting. Adjustable in the Set Usage Limits dialog on Settings → Billing (Owner only). See Billing & Plan.

N

Node

A single block on the Blueprint Editor canvas. Each node is a placed copy of a Prefab with its own Node Constants, typed input ports, and typed output ports.

Node Constant

A configurable value set directly on a node in the Blueprint Editor (for example a threshold, a topic name, or a format string). You edit node constants in the node’s settings panel.

Notification

An in-app alert shown in the notification bell at the top of the page. Triggered by system events such as a device going offline.

O

OTA (Over-the-Air)

A method of delivering firmware updates to a device wirelessly over the network, without needing a physical connection. While an OTA update is in progress, the device’s Connection Status shows Updating Firmware.

P

Peripheral

A hardware interface—such as UART, I2C, SPI, CAN, or Ethernet—that a blueprint node can communicate through. It is configured in two places:

In PRIZM Cloud – a peripheral-aware prefab picks its channel as a node constant, but the bus’s own parameters (baud rate, CAN timing, etc.) are set once per channel in the Blueprint Editor’s Global Peripheral Configuration panel (the sliders icon in the canvas toolbar), not inside the Ship deploy dialog. Whatever is set there is saved with the blueprint and travels with it on every deploy. The Ethernet Reader/Writer is an exception: it’s an SPI peripheral for channel/clock-rate purposes, but its network addressing is a node-level constant instead. See Peripheral settings.
On the device – Hardware Settings assigns the GPIO pins each bus uses. Ethernet has no card of its own — the onboard Ethernet module runs over SPI, so it uses whichever SPI channel’s pins the node is set to. A bus only starts if every pin it requires is filled in. See Hardware settings.

The two are joined by the channel number. UART, I2C, and SPI (including Ethernet, which runs over SPI) each have two channels (0 and 1, though SPI Channel 1 pin mapping is still rolling out); CAN has a single channel (0) only. The channel you set in peripheral settings names the bus on the device: channel 0 is UART Channel 0 / I2C Channel 0 / SPI Channel 0, channel 1 is UART Channel 1 / I2C Channel 1 / SPI Channel 1. The blueprint chooses the channel, Hardware Settings gives that channel its pins, and both are needed for the peripheral to work. See Peripheral settings for the full channel count and configurable options per peripheral type.

Pinned Dashboard

A dashboard pinned to the left sidebar as a shortcut. A company can have up to five at a time, and the most recently pinned is the one shown first. Dashboards that are not pinned do not appear in the sidebar — reach them through the Manage Dashboard button below the pinned list. See Dashboards.

Prefab

A reusable node template from the prefab library in the Blueprint Editor. Prefabs come pre-built (provided by PRIZM) or can be custom-made for your company. Each prefab defines what inputs, outputs, and Node Constants it exposes, and may include a Reference Link to documentation or an example.

R

Reference Link

A Docs or Example button that may appear on a prefab node in the Blueprint Editor. Clicking it opens external documentation or an example for that prefab in a new tab.

Reset Date

The date shown on Settings → Billing when your credit counter will reset to zero. It advances by 30 days each time it resets.

A toggle in widget configuration. When turned on, the widget continues to display the device’s last known value for up to 30 days even if the device stops sending data. Useful for sensors that only transmit occasionally.

Role

The permission level of an Employee. Full breakdown: Who can do what.

Owner – full access, including billing and the company’s name and image. A company has exactly one Owner. Setting another employee to Owner transfers the company to them and demotes you to Admin, which you cannot undo. Nobody can change their own role or remove themselves, and an Owner cannot leave a company that still has other employees.
Admin – can manage employees, devices, and blueprints, plus the API key and webhooks, but not billing and not the company’s name or image (that card is hidden from them entirely). Cannot demote an Owner or transfer ownership.
User – cannot create or edit devices, bundles, fields, blueprints, or dashboards, and has no access to Settings at all — it does not appear in their sidebar. Can view all data and dashboards, and can still operate a Trigger widget, which sends a command to a device.

S

Soft AP Mode

A setup mode in which a device broadcasts its own Wi-Fi network instead of joining one, so you can connect to it directly and configure it from a browser. A device enters Soft AP mode on request from the Devices list, or automatically after three failed connection attempts. Its configuration interface has three tabs: Hardware Settings, Security, and Device. See Soft AP mode.

Suffix

An optional unit label shown after a number in a widget (for example °C or km/h). Set it in the widget configuration panel. Available on Single Value, Graph, Gauge, and Histogram widgets.

T

Tab

One named section inside a Dashboard. Each dashboard can have several tabs, and each tab holds its own set of Widgets. The name you give a tab is what appears on its label. See Dashboards.

Time Range

A widget setting that controls how far back in history to fetch data (for example Last 6 hours or Last 7 days). Shown as Time Range in the widget configuration panel. Chart widgets also pair this with a Bucket Size.

Trigger

In the Blueprint Editor – a node type that lets a blueprint react to or send external commands and events.
As a widget – a dashboard widget with a button or toggle that sends a command directly to a device. You configure the trigger name, and optionally require a confirmation dialog before it fires.

W

Webhook

A URL that PRIZM Cloud calls with event data whenever something notable happens. Create and manage webhooks in Settings → Data & Integrations. Each webhook can have a name, a URL, and custom HTTP headers. A Test Webhook button fires a test payload at the URL currently in the form, so you can test before saving. A company can have three webhooks at a time; at three the create button reads FULL. See Data & Integrations.

A single card on a Dashboard tab. Available widget types:

Single Value – one aggregated value with an optional unit suffix.
Graph – a multi-line chart comparing several fields over time.
Gauge – a radial or fill-style gauge with configurable thresholds.
State – maps a numeric value to a color and label.
Boolean – shows a field as ON/OFF with custom text labels.
Map – plots the latest GPS position of a device on a map.
Image Map – overlays data points on a custom image you upload.
Image – displays the latest image a device has sent.
Text – static or Markdown-formatted text panel.
Histogram – shows data frequency distribution across time buckets.
Table – arranges other widget cells in a grid layout.
Trigger – a button or switch that sends a command to a device.