What Is the Activity Timeline?
The Activity Timeline is a per-device audit trail built into every LoopString dashboard. It automatically records events as they happen — flow deployments, device connection changes, alert breaches, room edits, threshold updates, and team acknowledgments — and presents them in a scrollable, time-stamped feed.
You do not need to configure anything to start using it. Events are logged automatically by the LoopString backend the moment they occur.
How to View the Timeline
Open your dashboard and select the device you want to inspect. Along the top of the page you will see two tabs: Dashboard and Activity. Click the Activity tab to switch to the timeline view.
The timeline loads the 50 most recent events first. If your device has a longer history, a Load more button appears at the bottom of the list. Click it to fetch the next page of events. You can keep loading older events until the full history has been retrieved.
Each entry in the timeline shows:
- A short description of what happened
- Who or what triggered the event (a team member's name, or "System" for automated events)
- A relative timestamp such as "5m ago" or "3h ago"; hovering the timestamp shows the exact date and time
Some events include additional detail. When a "details" link appears below an entry, click it to expand a metadata panel showing values like the old and new threshold settings, the room name, or the alert severity.
Filtering Events
Four filter chips appear at the top of the timeline to help you focus on what matters:
- All — shows every event in chronological order
- System Events — shows only device connection changes and flow deployments
- User Actions — shows only changes made by team members, such as room edits and setting updates
- Alerts — shows only alert breaches, alert-cleared confirmations, and acknowledgments
Selecting a filter chip immediately narrows the list. Click the same chip again or click All to restore the full feed.
Event Types Logged
The following event types are recorded automatically. No manual steps are required.
Flow deployed — recorded every time a Node-RED flow is pushed to the device from the Configurator. The entry notes the deployment status and includes the flow hash for traceability.
Device came online — recorded when the Raspberry Pi connects and its online status becomes active in LoopString.
Device went offline — recorded when the Pi disconnects or stops reporting.
Alert breach — recorded when a sensor reading crosses a configured warning or critical threshold. The entry identifies the sensor, the breached value, and the severity level.
Alert cleared — recorded when the sensor reading returns inside the safe range after a breach, confirming the condition has resolved.
Alert acknowledged — recorded when a team member acknowledges an alert in the notification center. The entry shows who acknowledged it.
Room created — recorded when a new room tab is added to the dashboard.
Room renamed — recorded when an existing room's name is changed, showing both the old and new names.
Room deleted — recorded when a room tab is removed from the dashboard.
Alert threshold updated — recorded when a warning or critical threshold for a sensor is edited. The entry stores the new min, max, critical-min, and critical-max values.
Manual reading saved — recorded when a team member uses the Save Reading action from a sensor card in Live Meter mode. This creates a timestamped annotation of a specific captured measurement.
Use Cases
Tracing the cause of a missed alert
If a critical process condition was missed, the timeline lets you reconstruct what happened. Switch to the Activity tab, apply the Alerts filter, and scan backward in time. You can see exactly when the breach was logged, whether it was eventually cleared, and whether any team member acknowledged it — and at what time. Cross-referencing this with the Analytics chart for the same sensor helps confirm whether the breach duration matches your expectations.
Auditing configuration changes before a batch run
Before starting a production run, operators often want to confirm that no thresholds or room assignments were changed unexpectedly since the last run. Apply the User Actions filter on the Activity tab and review the recent entries. Any threshold edits, room renames, or room deletions that occurred since the last sign-off will appear here with timestamps and actor names, giving you a clear picture of the current configuration state.
Troubleshooting
The timeline shows "No activity events yet" even though the device is active
Activity events are written by cloud backend functions rather than by the dashboard itself. A short delay of a few seconds is normal after an event occurs before it appears in the feed. If the timeline remains empty after several minutes of device activity, check that your device is correctly associated with your account by confirming it appears in the device selector. If you recently transferred device ownership, the new owner's timeline will start from the transfer point — historical events are stored under the original owner's account.
Events from several days ago are not visible
The timeline loads 50 events at a time, starting from the most recent. If the events you are looking for are older, use the Load more button repeatedly to page backward through the history. There is no fixed retention limit on activity events, but very long histories may require many pages to reach older entries. For precise historical analysis of sensor readings over time, use the Analytics tab, which provides time-range selection and charting rather than a paginated event log.
Known Issues and Limitations
Actor names for system-triggered events (such as device online/offline and flow deployments initiated by an automation) appear as "System" or "User" rather than a specific team member name. This is because those events are logged by the backend without a user session context.
The timeline does not update in real time. It reflects data at the time the Activity tab was opened or the last time Load more was clicked. To see the most recent events, switch away from the Activity tab and back again, or reload the page.
Events generated before the Activity Timeline feature was enabled for your device will not appear in the log. The timeline only captures events that occurred after the feature was active in the LoopString backend for your account.