Signals and freshness
icLens never shows a guess as a fact. Every figure tells you where it came from and how fresh it is, and missing data is shown as missing, never as zero.
Three things to check on any figure
Section titled “Three things to check on any figure”- Source. A small dot names where it came from: read from the Internet Computer (IC), Reported by your own code, or an Availability check.
- Time. When it was observed. A refresh keeps the last good value, with its original time, until the new one arrives.
- Coverage. Which canisters and which period it includes. A total over five canisters says so if one of them couldn’t be read.
The coverage line
Section titled “The coverage line”Under each canister’s name, the coverage line shows its five signals and the state of each:
Select a signal to see its state in words, why, and the one thing that would fix it, if anything.
| State | Means |
|---|---|
| Receiving | Data is arriving. |
| Waiting for first data | Set up, but nothing has arrived yet. |
| Needs setup | Not set up for this canister. |
| Needs access | The Agent isn’t allowed to read it yet. |
| Stale | It stopped arriving. |
| Paused | Collection is paused on purpose. |
| Partial | Some of it is arriving. |
| Failed | Reading it failed. |
Missing is not zero
Section titled “Missing is not zero”An empty chart means nothing matched, not that the value was zero. A chart can’t show history from before collection started, and a finer time step can’t add samples that were never collected.
When a change’s result is unclear
Section titled “When a change’s result is unclear”Reading data and changing a canister are different. If a change was sent but its reply was lost, it may have happened anyway. icLens marks it as uncertain and checks the canister before it lets you send it again.