A collection is a way of grouping sensors by what they are monitoring, rather than where they are physically located. Sites handle your physical structure. Collections handle everything else.
For example, you might have paintings stored across three different rooms in two different buildings. Each room is already set up as an area within a site. But if you want to monitor all those paintings together as a group, with their own climate rules and a single view of their data, a collection is how you do it.
Other common uses include:
- A loan exhibition arriving from another institution, with sensors tracking specific objects for the duration of the loan
- A group of sculptures that require stricter humidity control than the rest of the gallery
- A temporary showcase in a different part of the building, monitored only for the period it runs
- Any custom grouping of sensors that does not map neatly to a physical room or site
How collections differ from sites
A site represents a physical location. Everything in a site, including areas, rooms, and sensors, is tied to that place. You would use sites to reflect your building structure.
A collection is a label you apply across sensors, regardless of where they are. The same sensor can belong to a site and one or more collections at the same time. Collections do not move sensors out of their sites. They give you an additional way to group and view them.
Temporary or permanent
Collections can run for a fixed period or remain open-ended. If you set a start and end date, the collection will automatically move to your archived list once the end date passes. If you leave the dates blank, the collection stays active until you archive or delete it manually.
💡 You can apply a climate profile directly to a collection, giving you precise monitoring rules for that group of objects independent of the site-level settings.