Devices
When creating a device in Gear Studio, you can choose its model. Gear Studio supports two types of device models:
- Models built into Gear Studio. These are native, platform-certified models that are supported without any integration. For these device models, you generally only need to configure each device to report to the platform, and the platform will then automatically receive and process the information. When creating a device corresponding to a natively supported model, all necessary endpoints will be created automatically.
- User-defined models. These models are managed from the device models page. User-defined models are used to create devices that the platform does not natively support.
When you need to create a device corresponding to a user-defined model, the model must be created beforehand using the device models page.
To begin creating a device, navigate to the side menu and select Devices. This page shows the list of devices currently available in the facility, along with the list of endpoints defined for each one. If you need more information about the difference between devices and endpoints, we recommend consulting this page.
To create a new device, choose the Add option.
Next, you will be presented with some fields to fill in. In the Description field, add a name to easily identify the device -- we will name it Custom Device. Then expand the Models dropdown offered by the platform and select the desired one. In our case, we select our Test Model.
You must also add a unique address for the device. We recommend using a MAC address or a naming convention with a consistent pattern to simplify management, whenever possible.
For certain device models, the platform will automatically validate the address format. This typically occurs for native devices where the platform already knows the address must be a valid MAC.
In our case, since our device has a model created by us, we add the address we want, then press Save.
We have returned to the list of created devices where we can see our custom device, which has zero endpoints. However, we have the ability to add and remove as many as needed.
As mentioned earlier, if you created a device corresponding to a natively supported model on the platform, all corresponding endpoints will also be created automatically.
More Information
For more information about the differences between devices and endpoints, we recommend reading devices and endpoints. To learn how to manage endpoints, read the endpoints section in the tutorials list.