Plant Room Agent
The hourly check from the Plant Room PC at a site: installing it, what the Live column means, and approving the devices it finds.
Plant Room Agent
The Plant Room Agent is a small Windows program that runs on the Plant Room PC at a site. Once an hour it checks every device that has an IP address in that project's Networking system, then reports back. Your device list then shows which devices answer, when each one was last seen, and any device that has appeared on an address you reserved.
Installing it
- Open the project, go to the Systems tab and select the Networking system.
- On the Plant Room PC's row (a device of type Supervisor PC), open the … menu and choose Generate agent token. Copy the token: it is shown only once.
- From the same menu choose Download agent, or open
dynamik.app/systems/plant-room-agenton the Plant Room PC. Click Download for Windows and unzip the file. - On the PC, right-click
install.ps1, choose Run with PowerShell as Administrator, and paste the token.
Windows may warn that the program is from an unknown publisher. Choose More info, then Run anyway.
The agent runs every hour, and again 5 minutes after the PC starts. If you generate a new token, the old one stops working, so run install.ps1 again with the new token.
The Live column
The Networking device list has a Live column:
| Badge | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Online | The device answered the last check. Underneath is when it was last seen. |
| Offline | An installed (Active) device missed two checks in a row, about two hours. You get one alert when it goes offline and one when it is back. |
| Unknown | Nothing has checked this device yet. |
Reserved devices (status Inactive) are never marked offline. An address you have planned but not installed yet stays quiet.
Approving devices
When a reserved device answers for the first time, the agent proposes it. The row shows Seen with the MAC address and, where it can be identified, the maker (Hikvision, NETGEAR, BT…).
- Approve (in the … menu) marks the device Active and records who approved it and when.
- Reject is for when something else is on that address, such as a laptop or a printer. It clears the MAC address, and the device stays reserved.
MAC changed
If an approved device answers with a different MAC address, the row shows MAC changed and the device health turns to warning. Hover over the badge to see the old and new addresses. Nothing is overwritten on its own. If you replaced the device on purpose, choose Accept new MAC in the … menu.
The download page
The Plant Room Agent page, dynamik.app/systems/plant-room-agent, is public, so you can open it straight on the Plant Room PC without signing in. It shows the latest version with its date and SHA-256 checksum, the Download for Windows button and the install steps. The download is safe to share: the program does nothing until it is given a token generated in your account.
When a PC goes quiet
If a Plant Room PC stops reporting for more than two hours and a quarter, you get one alert. You get another when it reports again. While it is quiet, its devices keep their last state. A PC that is switched off says nothing about the equipment behind it.
What it does not do
- It does not check CCTV cameras. They sit on the NVR's own network; the agent checks the NVR.
- It does not scan the network for devices you have not added.
- It checks once an hour, not continuously.