Overview

Turn an app idea into FlowFuse pieces you can name and say in one sentence.

Apps

App delivery methods

• Whole app — A complete, versioned project promoted through dev, staging and prod — via snapshots & pipelines.
• Pieces — A reusable piece packaged to the Team Library, installed like a shared library — via subflow export.

Hardware apps

• Packaged App — Sealed product on a Remote Instance, identical on every device.
• Configurable App — Same build on a Remote Instance, tuned by a per-site config file that lives on the device.
• Edge Building Block — A reusable edge block you wire into your own upstream flows.

Software apps

• Packaged App — Headless job on a Hosted or Remote Instance, no screen.
• Data-Driven App — User-facing app on a Hosted Instance, backed by data.
• Shared Building Block — Reusable UI or logic many Hosted Instances embed.

Architectures

Data plane — how data is handled

• Built in — Tables — Relational records — built into every FlowFuse install, exposed to every instance.
• Built in — Broker / UNS — Team Broker — built into every FlowFuse install; publish once, many subscribe.
• Time-series — External today — no built-in TSDB; run Timescale/Quest and expose it to the fleet.
• Bring your own — Expose any other store or service (SQL, ML, gateway) over Project Link.

Execution plane — where it runs

• OT architectures — Near the equipment — edge with the server in IT or an OT/DMZ, hardware-saving consolidation, and air-gapped sites.
• IT architectures — Hosting & governing — on-prem, your cloud per-site, hosting choice at scale, and enterprise governance.
• IIoT architectures — The live data backbone — a Unified Namespace where edge publishes once and many subscribe, across every site.

Examples

• Worked example — OEE, end to end — the full chain from edge to broker to cloud to history.