Maintenance APP manual

Owned by Niels Siesling
Last updated: Nov 14, 2022 by Sander Jager
5 min read

This is a short manual on how to use the Maintenance app.

Maintenance is designed as a mobile app (in a website) to help maintenance engineers check if a light point is in working order during times when the light would normally be turned off, e.g. due to astro-clock during daytime.

The app can be reached on request (please contact your contact person at Tvilight). When navigating to the page for the first time, the user is presented with a login screen from Passport, where the user can login with the same email & password combination that is used for CityManager. Note, that in order to use Light Switch, the user needs to have permissions to change the settings of OLC devices that the user wants to switch on.

After logging in, the user is presented with a map screen centered at their current location. If location services are not available, or permission to use location is not given, a popup will appear. In this case the user can double-tap a location on the map to move their position there, though the app is more convenient when location can be determined automatically.

Popup when location is not available
Default view

The map view will move along with the user’s location automatically, until they move the map around manually by dragging it. The blue ‘location’ button in the lower-right corner can be used to re-center the map view on the user’s current location and resume following the current location.

Devices are shown on the map with the same markers as used in CityManager. A blue marker indicates the device is currently online, gray markers indicate devices that are offline.

On the bottom of the screen are three tools:

  1. A button labeled ‘Devices’ that shows a list of devices within the range of the faint red circle centered around the user’s location.

  2. A slider that increases/decreases the radius of the faint red circle and consequently changes which devices are listed in the list of nearby devices.

  3. A refresh button to update the list of nearby devices immediately. Note: the list of nearby devices is updated automatically when the user moves around, so using this button should not usually be needed.

When a device is selected, the (approximate) address of the device is shown below its name in the nearby devices list. A popup also shows in the map view, although not all its details might be visible on devices with a low screen resolution.

A device can also be selected directly from the map view by tapping on the marker at the device’s location:

The popup shows the device’s name at the top, as well as its serial number and MAC address, and a button to switch it on. If the device is offline, the Switch On button is disabled, but the reload button next to it can be used to refresh the status in case the device is expected to come online soon.

When the Switch On button is pressed, a command to turn the light on is sent to the device and a dialog shows the progress of the comman toward the light controller. This command goes through 5 stages:

  1. Pending

  2. Sent

  3. At gateway

  4. Processing

  5. Done or Failed

These are the same as the status values shown in the Changes tab of a device in CityManager. If the process gets stuck at a point before being Done, it means the command could not reach the OLC, otherwise the lamp should be turned on when there is a check mark next to Done.

The only way to close the dialog is to press the Switch Off button. This turns the lamp off again by resetting the device back to the way it was configured in CityManager1. There is no harm in pressing this button if switching the device on did not succeed, but it is important to Switch Off the device before moving on, otherwise the light will keep burning until its settings are changed in CityManager.

Finally, in the top left of the screen is a button leading to a menu with the name of the user currently logged in, a sign out button, and a button to an about screen. On the top right of the screen is a help button to show tooltips in the app itself, pressing this button again hides the tooltips.

1 Switching a light on is achieved by sending a command changing the device’s operating mode to Fixed level at 100% brightness, and turning astro-clock and (central) ALS off. These changes are not visible in the Settings tab of CityManager, but the change command itself can be seen in the Changes tab. Pressing the Switch Off button has the same effect as pressing Synchronize All Settings in CityManager.