Nodes

A node is a machine you add to a workspace. A scene pinned to it runs its computer there: your laptop, a Raspberry Pi in the lab, a server in your own rack. By default scenes run on machines we operate; a node is how a workspace brings its own.

One command adds a machine

On the machine, run daslab node join with a workspace key. The node connects outward to Daslab; nothing opens on your side, no port, no DNS record, no firewall rule. Within seconds it appears in the workspace as a tile, and stopping the command removes it.

The tile says what the machine offers

A node's tile carries what the machine can do: the processor architecture, how much it can run at once, whether it reaches a local network and which one, the address its traffic leaves from, the devices plugged into it, a GPU if it has one, and whether it can take live video. The agent reads the same tile. A scene running on a node knows it can reach nas.local because the node says so, and knows when it cannot.

Pinning a scene to a node is linking it

Drag the node tile into a scene and that scene's computer runs on the machine from the next job on. A scene without a pinned node runs on the workspace's own nodes if it has any, and on our machines otherwise. Where a computer ran is recorded with every run, and minutes on your own node are not metered.

Some things only a node can do

Reach the machines on your local network. Make requests from your own address rather than a datacenter's. Talk to hardware plugged into the node: a camera, a serial port, an arm. Run next to a GPU you own. Take a camera's live video in on your own network. Keep a scene's work inside your building.

Live video can come in on the machine

A machine with ffmpeg on it says so on its tile, and a camera in the scene can then publish into that machine instead of a cloud region. The scene hands you a short address on your own network — rtmp://192.168.1.23:1935/live/… — for the glasses, the phone, OBS or a Pi to publish to, and the machine forwards the stream into the camera's session. Live video, scrubbing back, and asking what the camera saw all work as before; what changes is that the first hop never leaves the building, and that a publisher types a short local address rather than a long one belonging to a region on the other side of the world.

The same capability can publish the machine's own screen into a scene, so the desktop shows up live and can be asked about. On macOS that needs Screen Recording granted to the node, in System Settings under Privacy & Security; until it is, the stream connects but stays black. A publisher has to be on the same network as the machine — a camera out in the world still publishes to a region.

A node on a plant network can read its machines

A scene pinned to a node can read the industrial equipment that node reaches, and only read it. Over OPC UA it browses a server's address space, reads the value, status and timestamp of named nodes, and records every change to them over a window of up to five minutes; security None or Basic256Sha256 with a username both work, and a server with security on has to trust the node's client certificate once, as it would any client. Over Modbus it reads holding and input registers, coils and discrete inputs, over TCP or on a serial line plugged into the node, and decodes register words as 16- or 32-bit integers or floats in either word order, with a scale. There is no write, no method call and no Modbus write function among these tools: a write to a PLC can move equipment. A password is never typed to the agent; the tool takes the name of a scene secret that holds it.

Who may use a node

A node is a tile, so it sits in a layer like everything else. A node you add lands locked: the whole workspace sees it, and only you can pin scenes to it until you open the lock or name people. Add it to your private layer and only your own runs can use it. A node serves the workspace it was added to and no other.

A node that is away makes its scenes wait

When a machine is off or offline, the scenes pinned to it say so and wait. Their computers are not moved to our machines: a scene that was pinned to a machine on your network stays on it.

What's next

Updated 2026-09-18