Glossary A–ZLetter H
Heartbeat
A heartbeat is a short message that a device sends to the management software at fixed intervals to show that it is running and reachable.
If several messages fail to arrive, the device is considered offline.
A player might send a heartbeat every minute or every few minutes, often with additional details such as software version, free storage, temperature or the content currently playing. From this, the management software shows the status in the device list, for example “last seen 3 minutes ago”, and raises an alert if heartbeats stay away for longer.
A heartbeat only says that the player is running and can reach the network, not that the screen is showing anything useful: the display may be off, set to the wrong input or showing an error message. The interval is a trade-off, because short intervals report failures sooner but create more traffic, which matters on mobile connections. Devices that are switched off completely as planned fall silent; this should not be treated as a fault.