Promethist Watchdog

Known limitations

Things Watchdog does not do yet, so you aren’t left looking for them.

The installer is not code-signed. Watchdog is distributed directly to a small number of partners rather than published for download, so Windows shows an "unrecognised app" warning when you first run the installer. Choose More info, then Run anyway.

The emergency-shutdown network trigger is plain HTTP, not HTTPS. Its password crosses your network unencrypted, so anyone able to watch that network segment can read it. The exposure is one capability — powering off that one kiosk — and it is off by default. Narrow it with the allow_from list and a tight firewall rule, and prefer the command-line trigger where anything can run on the kiosk. See Shutting down when the power fails.

The connection record has no chart in Watchdog’s window. It shows the latest reading on the machine strip and writes every one to a CSV; turning a month of those into a graph is Excel’s job, not Watchdog’s. See Proving the network was the problem.

A speed test measures the route to one server, not "the internet". If the default Cloudflare endpoints are slow or blocked from a particular building, the readings describe that, and there is no automatic fallback to a second server. Point the settings at something you trust from that site instead, and leave them alone afterwards so a year of readings stays comparable.

Deliberately left out of the command line

  • Editing one element of a list. quiet_windows and launch.args are replaced entirely; there is no quiet_windows[1].days. For anything finer, export, edit, and import.

  • Offline editing. Commands require a running Watchdog. A second process editing watchdog.yaml behind its back would be silently overwritten by the next save, so it refuses instead.

  • Tab completion.