Reports & DocumentationLive Topology

Live Topology

Real-time map of every PRISMATIK machine on the local network.

Live Topology is the second view mode of the Flow Tool. It draws a node-and-edge diagram of every PRISMATIK instance it can see on the LAN, color-coded by session state, and updates itself every 10 seconds.

It’s the view you keep open during a show. If a venue machine drops, you see it within ten seconds. If a console rejoins, you see it within ten seconds. No refresh, no manual polling.

Overview

The desktop app and Venue Mode instances both announce themselves on the local network using mDNS (Bonjour) under the service type _prismatik._tcp. Live Topology subscribes to that announcement stream and renders the result.

  • Self sits in the centre.
  • Peers are arranged in a circle around it.
  • Edges connect Self to peers that share the active Venue Mode session.
  • Colors indicate health: green = in your session, yellow = on the LAN but not in your session, red = not heard from in over a minute.
  • Crown icons mark the session host.

When to Use

Open Live Topology when:

  • You’re running a multi-machine venue and want a single pane of glass on what’s online
  • You’re commissioning a fresh site and need to confirm every machine is discovering the others
  • A machine has gone offline mid-show and you need to identify it fast
  • You’re inviting a new instance to a session and want visual confirmation it joined

If you want to author a static signal-flow diagram of the production (cables, devices, ports), use the Signal Flow mode instead. Live Topology is for live network state, not authored documentation.

Step-by-Step

  1. Open Flow Tool from the home screen.
  2. Click Live Topology in the view-mode toggle at the top of the page.
  3. Wait a few seconds for mDNS discovery to populate. The top-left status badge tells you how many peers are visible.
  4. Click any node — Self or peer — to open the status popover.
  5. The popover shows host/port, version, platform, last-seen age, and capabilities.
  6. To force a refresh sooner than the 10-second interval, click the seconds counter at the top-left.

Common Workflows

Confirming a new venue machine joined the LAN

  1. Power up the venue machine. PRISMATIK auto-launches into Venue Mode.
  2. On your laptop, open Live Topology.
  3. The new machine should appear within 30 seconds as a yellow node.
  4. Click it to confirm version + platform.

Identifying which machine dropped during a show

  1. A yellow node turns red when it hasn’t been heard from in over a minute.
  2. Click the red node to see last-known host and capabilities.
  3. The popover’s “last seen” field tells you how recently it was reachable.
  4. If it goes fully missing (purged from the discovery map after 2 minutes), check the Venue Mode dashboard at my.prismatik.run/dashboard/venues for the last cloud-sync heartbeat.

Inviting a peer into your session

The invite flow itself lives in the Venue Network panel, not in Live Topology. But Live Topology is the easiest place to confirm a peer exists before you try to invite it.

Tips & Shortcuts

  • The view auto-fits on first load. Use mouse wheel to zoom and drag to pan.
  • Click empty canvas to close the status popover.
  • The “seconds ago” counter in the top-left badge is itself clickable — that’s the manual refresh button.
  • If you see no peers but you know another instance is running, check that both machines are on the same subnet and that mDNS isn’t being blocked by a router or firewall.

Troubleshooting

“No peers discovered” but I know another machine is online.

  • Both machines must be on the same LAN subnet. mDNS doesn’t cross routers without IGMP snooping configured.
  • Some corporate networks block mDNS entirely. Check with the venue IT team.
  • The other machine has to be running PRISMATIK (desktop or Venue Mode) — version 1.0.8 or later for the _prismatik._tcp service announcement.

A peer shows red even though it’s working.

  • Red means “haven’t received an mDNS update for more than 60 seconds.” If the machine is fine but mDNS is being rate-limited, this can be misleading. Verify in the Venue Mode dashboard which uses cloud-sync heartbeat instead.

Two crowns showing (two hosts).

  • This can happen briefly after a network partition heals. The session that started later usually loses the host role on the next heartbeat. If both persist, leave and re-create the session.

Related Tools

  • Flow Tool — Signal Flow — author the static signal-flow diagram of devices and cables.
  • Venue Network panel — invite peers into a session, accept invites, leave sessions.
  • Venue Mode dashboard (web) — the cloud-backed counterpart to Live Topology, surfacing instances even when you’re not on the venue LAN.

Source

Component: LiveTopologyView mDNS discovery: InstanceDiscovery IPC channel: venue:network:getPeers

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