HyperVisu uses a small set of terms throughout the apps, the admin panel, and this manual. Learn these once and everything else falls into place.
Devices, widgets and communication objects
- A device is what you see and control in the app: a light, a shutter, a thermostat. In the admin panel and in technical chapters the same thing is called a widget.
- Behind every widget sit its communication objects — the individual values it exchanges with the installation: a switch object, a brightness value, a measured temperature. The installer binds each object to a protocol address (a KNX group address, a Modbus register, a Home Assistant entity, an HTTP endpoint, an MQTT topic, a BACnet object, a TCP/UDP frame key).
The building
The installation is organized as building → floors → rooms. Every device lives in one room. Floors carry level numbers (0 is the ground floor, negative numbers are basements), and rooms carry photos and icons that the app uses on tiles and banners.
Categories group devices by function across the whole building — Lighting, Shutters, Heating, and so on. Every device belongs to one room and one category. Categories become the tiles on the app home screen and the filters inside every room.
Ways to make things happen
| Concept | What it is | Who builds it |
|---|---|---|
| Scenario (scene) | One button that sets many devices to saved states, optionally on a schedule | Owner/Admin (see “Scenarios”) |
| Automation | A WHEN / IF / THEN rule: triggers, conditions, actions | Owner/Admin (see “Automations”) |
| Function | One configured instance of a logic block in the Logic engine — a thermostat, automatic shading, a timer, a calculated value | Installer (see “Functions in the App”, “Logic Engine — Concepts & Canvas”) |
| Device group | One widget that drives many compatible devices at once | Owner/Admin (see “Device Groups”) |
| View | A custom dashboard page you compose from devices, charts and cards | Anyone, per user (see “Custom Views”) |
Access levels
Every user account has an access level from 1 to 5:
- Level 1 is the most restricted — a guest who sees only the rooms and categories left open to everyone.
- Levels 2 to 4 decide which parts of the building a user sees: each room and category carries a minimum level, and a user below it does not see that room or category at all.
- Level 5 is the administrator: full control in the app, in-app edit mode, and the admin panel.
Every account can control the devices it sees. A user can additionally be restricted to specific rooms and categories, so a guest account can be limited to, say, the guest room and lighting only. The complete permissions matrix is in “Users & Access Levels”.
Services
The server runs application services that enrich the system:
- Weather — live conditions and forecast, used on the home screen, in views, in automations and in the Logic engine (see “Weather Service”).
- Energy price — hourly electricity prices with cheap/average/expensive tiers (see “Energy Price Service”).
- Email — lets automations send email to HyperVisu users (see “Email Service”).
- Notifications — push notifications to phones (see “Push Notifications”).
Glossary
All terms above, plus the protocol vocabulary (group address, datapoint type, entity, register, tunnel…), are defined in the glossary (see “Glossary”).