Core concepts: from providers to cards

Zones and subzones

Zones organise your installation by location. A flat might have a living room, kitchen and bathroom; a larger property might have a house and garden, with floors and rooms nested below them.

Providers and devices

A provider is one instance of an integration, such as Zigbee2MQTT or Sonos2MQTT. Pair or configure devices in that application’s own interface first. The provider then exposes its devices, and you select which ones to register in NQ2. You can use more than one provider instance.

Cards

Cards are the everyday interface. A card may represent part of a device, several devices together, or no physical device at all. Use one gate card to combine a camera, contact sensor and relay, or separate temperature and humidity cards for one multisensor.

Cards can store readings and aggregated history. Configure sampling intervals and the summaries relevant to your data, such as daily temperature minimum, maximum and average.

Triggers, scripts and schedules

Triggers respond to events or state changes. Conditions determine whether a script should run. Scripts perform actions and can interact with schedules and HTTP services. Cron expressions define schedule timing; schedules can also be enabled or disabled.

Scripts have broad capabilities. Give administration access only to people who should configure the system and test new automations with a limited scope.

Users and guests

Administrators manage the system. Standard users use cards across the installation. Restricted users see the zones and controls assigned to them. Guest keys provide access to selected controls without conventional login; scripts can manage when that access is active. Optional two-factor authentication adds a login check.

Local and online access

Local control runs in your installation. Optional online access works through selected cards, with permissions that can be narrower than local permissions. Connectivity notifications can be configured through webhooks, but delivery depends on the network and notification service.

Start with the installation overview and downloads. Existing integration and code materials remain in integrations, snippets and scripts.