Stale Data

Onboard continuously polls your building's BACnet devices and sensors at the configured poll frequency to keep live data up to date. When a device or point stops reporting, it is considered stale, meaning Onboard has not received a recent update from that device or sensor.

This guide explains how to identify stale devices and points, investigate the root cause, and get them back online.

🔍 How to Identify Stale Devices & Points

Via the Portal

1. Navigate to the Buildings page and select the building(s) you want to inspect.
2. Check the Live Points (Percent) column. If the value is below 100%, the building has stale data.
3. Check the Status column:
   1. If it shows Offline, navigate to the Deployments page and check the status of the associated Collector. If the Collector also shows Offline, Onboard has lost connectivity with the Edge Node. This will need to be investigated on-site, as Onboard does not have access to the Collector without an active heartbeat.
   2. if it shows Online, click on it to open the Building Dashboard, which shows data collection activity and a list of sensors that are currently offline. The dashboard also displays what percentage of data is stale.

Via the API

Retrieve all published points using the GET /points endpoint (requires buildings::read scope) and filter by the last_updated timestamp to identify which points have stopped trending. This gives you full control over the results and allows you to export the list directly for further analysis or reporting.

🔎 Investigating the Root Cause

Once you have identified stale devices or points, confirm whether the issue originates on the network or within Onboard.

Is the device or sensor responding on the network?

Confirm that the affected device or sensor is active and reachable on the building network. You can do this by:

• Checking the device status through your BAS front-end (if you have access).
• Engaging your IT or BAS team to verify the device is online and responding.

To help with cross-referencing, you can retrieve the Device ID directly from Onboard and share it with your team for identification.

🔄 Device/Sensor is reporting on the network but Onboard still shows Stale

If you have confirmed the device or sensor is active on the network but Onboard still shows it as stale, the Collector may have stopped polling it.

Onboard's Collector automatically stops polling a device or sensor after it has been unreachable for a certain period of time. Even after the device comes back online, the Collector will not automatically resume polling it.

To resolve this, run a new BACnet discovery from the Onboard App. This restarts BACnet services on the Collector and resumes polling for all published devices and sensors. Refer to the BACnet Discovery & Data Collection guide for instructions.

If this does not resolve the data collection, please reach out to Onboard Support immediately.

🔔 Stay Ahead of Stale Data with Data Alerts

To avoid manually checking for stale devices and points, set up Data Alerts in Onboard. Alerts can notify you when a building, equipment, or point stops trending — so you can investigate and take action before issues escalate.