Monitor Overview

The Sensor Net monitor is a desktop application that connects to the receiver node over USB, reads incoming sensor data, and displays a live analytics dashboard. It is the “present” layer of the Information Internetworks data pipeline — turning raw sensor reports into meaningful visualizations.

Source Repository

The monitor application lives in the sensor-net-monitor repository.

What It Does

The monitor application performs three functions:

1. Reads data from the receiver. A Rust backend opens the USB serial port, reads lines from the receiver node, and parses each [REPORT] line into structured data.
2. Stores data persistently. Parsed reports are inserted into a local SQLite database so historical data is retained across sessions.
3. Renders a live dashboard. A React/TypeScript frontend polls the database and computes analytics (trends, anomalies, node health), then renders charts, status indicators, and detailed data tables.

Technology Stack

The application is built with Tauri, a framework for building desktop applications with a web frontend and a native backend.

Layer	Technology	Role
Backend	Rust (Tauri)	Serial port I/O, SQLite database, command API
Frontend	React + TypeScript	Dashboard UI, analytics, data visualization
Bundler	Vite	Fast frontend build and hot reload
Styling	Tailwind CSS	Utility-first CSS framework
UI primitives	shadcn/ui	Pre-built accessible components (buttons, cards, etc.)
Package manager	Bun	Manages JavaScript dependencies

Architecture Overview

The application has a clear separation between the native backend and the web frontend.

Rust Backend (src-tauri/src/lib.rs)

All native functionality lives in a single Rust file. It exposes Tauri commands that the frontend can call using invoke(), similar to an HTTP API but over an internal message bridge. The backend handles:

• Listing available serial ports
• Opening and closing the serial connection
• Parsing incoming serial data with a regex
• Writing parsed reports to SQLite
• Responding to frontend queries for node summaries, sensor data history, statistics, and recent reports

When a serial connection is opened, the backend spawns a background thread that reads lines from the serial port continuously. Each line is emitted to the frontend as a serial-log event. If a line matches the [REPORT] format, it is also parsed, inserted into the database, and a new-report event is emitted.

React Frontend (src/)

The frontend is a standard React application with two custom hooks that manage all state:

• useSerial — Tracks serial connection state, available ports, and raw log lines. Calls into Rust for port operations and listens for Tauri events.
• useMonitorData — Fetches database-backed data (node summaries, stats, sensor history, recent reports). Refreshes automatically on new-report events and every 5 seconds as a fallback.

Both hooks are called in App.tsx and their return values flow down to child components as props. There is no global state library.

Analytics Layer (src/analytics/)

Between the data hooks and the UI components sits a pure analytics layer. These are plain functions with no side effects and no UI — they take data in and return computed results:

Function	Input	Output
computeSensorInsights	Temperature and pressure history	Trend direction, rate of change, anomaly flags per sensor
computeNodeHealth	Node summaries	Signal quality assessment and online/offline status per node
computeSystemStatus	Insights + node health	Overall system health level (nominal, warning, critical)
buildPacketInfos	Recent reports	Formatted packet display objects for the packet inspector

App.tsx wraps these calls in useMemo so they only re-run when input data changes, not on every render.

Database

The application creates a SQLite database automatically on first launch. All sensor data is stored in a single reports table. The database file persists between sessions, so you can close and reopen the app without losing historical data.

OS	Database Location
macOS	~/Library/Application Support/lora-monitor/data.db
Windows	C:\Users\<You>\AppData\Roaming\lora-monitor\data.db
Linux	~/.local/share/lora-monitor/data.db

To start fresh, simply delete the data.db file. It will be recreated on the next launch.

Next Step

Proceed to Monitor Setup to install the prerequisites and clone the repository.