Zones

Zones represent the spatial structure of your home. They organize your equipments into rooms, floors, and areas -- and they automatically compute real-time status for each space.

Creating zones

Go to Administration > Zones.

Building your zone tree

Zones form a hierarchy (tree structure). A typical setup:

Home
  Ground Floor
    Living Room
    Kitchen
    Hallway
    Bathroom
  First Floor
    Master Bedroom
    Kids Room
    Office
  Outdoor
    Garden
    Terrace
    Garage

To create a zone:

1. Click Add Zone
2. Enter a name
3. Select a parent zone (or none for a root zone)

You can nest zones to any depth, but 2--3 levels is usually enough (Home > Floor > Room).

Reordering zones

Zones have a display order that controls how they appear in the sidebar. You can reorder zones within the same parent by dragging them in the zone list.

Editing and deleting

• Click a zone to edit its name or move it to a different parent
• Delete removes the zone and unassigns its equipments (they are not deleted)

Warning

You cannot delete a zone that has child zones. Delete or move the children first.

Zone aggregation

This is one of Sowel's most powerful features. Every zone automatically computes aggregated data from the equipments it contains. No configuration needed.

What gets aggregated

Data	Logic	Example
Temperature	Average of all temperature sensors	21.5 C (avg of 2 Aqara sensors)
Humidity	Average of all humidity sensors	45%
Luminosity	Average of all light sensors	320 lx
Motion	OR across all motion sensors	"Motion" if any PIR detects presence
Motion duration	Time since last motion state change	"Calm for 15 min"
Lights on	Count of active lights	2 / 5 lights on
Shutters open	Count of open shutters	1 / 3 shutters open
Average shutter position	Average position across all shutters	65%
Open doors	Count of open door contacts	1 door open
Open windows	Count of open window contacts	2 windows open
Water leak	OR across all water leak sensors	Alert if any sensor detects water
Smoke	OR across all smoke sensors	Alert if any sensor detects smoke

Recursive aggregation

Aggregation is recursive: a parent zone automatically merges data from all its child zones.

Example: The "First Floor" zone aggregates data from Master Bedroom, Kids Room, and Office. If there is motion in any of those rooms, the First Floor shows "Motion". The temperature shown is the average across all three rooms.

This means you can glance at a floor-level zone and know the overall status without checking each room individually.

How it appears in the UI

In the Home view, each zone displays a status header with aggregated data shown as colored pills:

• Temperature pill (e.g., "21.5 C")
• Humidity pill (e.g., "45%")
• Motion pill with duration ("Motion" or "Calm 15min")
• Lights count pill (e.g., "2/5")
• Shutters count pill (e.g., "1/3")
• Alert pills for open doors/windows, water leaks, smoke

Below the header, equipments are grouped by type (Lights, Shutters, Sensors) with inline controls.

Activity feed

Each zone has a live Activity panel on the right side of the Home view. It is a glance widget that shows what just happened in the zone: orders dispatched, motion detected, recipes started, mode changes, sunrise/sunset, alarms.

The panel groups events by hour. The most recent bucket is labeled HH:00 → now, older buckets are labeled HH:00.

What is tracked

Category	Triggered by	Example
Order	Any equipment order dispatched by a recipe, mode, button, manual API call	Lumière → ON manuel, Lumière → OFF par Motion Light
Motion	Motion sensor rising edge (binding category motion)	Motion detected on PIR Living Room
Recipe	Recipe instance start / stop	Recipe Motion Light started
Mode	Mode activation / deactivation	Mode Night activated
Sunlight	Sunrise or sunset transition	Sunset
Alarm	System alarm raised, recipe errors, water leak, smoke detection	Smoke detector Kitchen: Smoke detected

Each item shows who triggered it: a recipe name, a mode name, "manual" for direct UI actions, the button id, or "external" for inbound MQTT.

Coalescing

When a recipe dispatches multiple identical orders in a quick burst (e.g., Motion Light turns off three appliques at the same time), the feed merges them into a single row with a count: Applique x 1 ×3 → OFF par Motion Light. The window is 500 ms; the same alias, value, and source are required for merging.

Sub-zones toggle

By default, the panel only shows events whose zone matches the one you are viewing, plus events that apply globally (mode changes, sunrise/sunset, system alarms). When you are on a parent zone (for example "Home"), enable the small Network-icon toggle in the panel header to also include events from all sub-zones — that is what the screenshot above shows, with the toggle filled blue.

The toggle appears only on zones that have children. Your choice is remembered across navigation (stored in the browser).

Mobile

On mobile, the panel sits below the Behaviors section and shows only the 10 most recent items. It is a glance, not a history. To investigate further, use the Logs page.

Live status

The pill in the top right shows ● live when the app is connected to Sowel via WebSocket. If you lose connection it switches to ○ offline and the panel stops receiving new items until reconnection.

Memory window

The Sowel engine keeps the last 24 hours of events in memory (capped at 2000 entries). The buffer is reset when the container restarts, the same way the logs ring buffer works. For deeper or older investigation, use the Logs page.

Zone orders

Each zone exposes automatic orders that you can use from the UI or in automations:

Order	Effect
All Off	Turns off all equipments in the zone (and child zones)
All Lights Off	Turns off all light equipments in the zone
All Lights On	Turns on all light equipments in the zone

These are available in the Home view, in the API, and as actions in recipes and modes.

Tips

• Match your physical layout: Zones should reflect how you think about your home. If you say "the living room", that should be a zone.
• Don't over-nest: Two or three levels (Home > Floor > Room) is usually enough. Deeply nested trees are harder to navigate.
• Outdoor zones: Create an "Outdoor" zone for garden sensors, gate, and any exterior equipment.
• Aggregation drives value: The more sensors and equipments you assign to zones, the richer the aggregated status becomes. Even a single temperature sensor in a room makes the zone header useful.