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Site survey: inventory a Brainboxes deployment with BB-Eco

You're handed the keys to a customer's network, an OT engineer's laptop, and an hour to document what's actually deployed. This guide walks through using BB-Eco to turn that into a complete, exportable inventory in under fifteen minutes, so you can hand the customer a real report instead of sketching on a whiteboard.

It works equally well for:

  • First-time customer site visits: figure out what's there before you change anything.
  • Pre-upgrade audits: confirm device counts and firmware versions match the customer's records.
  • Periodic asset reviews: diff against last quarter's inventory; new devices show up immediately.
  • Handover documentation: leaving a project? Hand the next engineer a CSV.

Before you start​

  • BB-Eco installed on a laptop you can plug into the site network. (See Install BB-Eco.)
  • A wired Ethernet connection to the same Layer 2 segment as the devices you want to find.
  • The customer's permission to passively observe the network. Active CIDR scans require the same permission for the subnets you intend to probe.

Step 1: Plug in and let auto-discovery do its work​

Plug your laptop into a free port on the customer's switch and open BB-Eco. Within seconds the dashboard fills with every Brainboxes device on that broadcast domain. No buttons to press, no scans to start.

BB-Eco dashboard with eight Brainboxes devices auto-discovered in a two-column grid: ED and ES models including an ED-549 (Online, Update available) and an offline ED-560. Along the top: the search box and the grid/list view toggle, then Filter, Upgrade all (1), Export and Add at the right.

If devices are missing, work through the no-devices troubleshooting checklist. The usual cause is a VPN or a cross-subnet topology.

The dashboard's top toolbar gives you the filters that matter for survey work. Narrow by family or status, then Export writes a CSV you can paste straight into the report:

Top toolbar of the BB-Eco dashboard zoomed in: search box, view toggle, family filter (All Families), status filter (All Status), grouping dropdown, Export button, and yellow Add button

Step 2: Open Network Neighborhood for the rest of the LAN​

Click the Network Neighborhood icon (globe) in the left sidebar. This view lists every device on the segment that announces itself (printers, NAS, IP cameras, edge controllers, smart-home gear) using SSDP, mDNS, and WS-Discovery in parallel.

BB-Eco Network Neighborhood populated with six discovered devices grouped by role: Endpoint (Synology NAS, Brother printer, HP LaserJet), Industrial (Brainboxes ED-549, BB-400) and Security (Axis IP camera). SSDP, mDNS, and WS-Discovery source badges are visible.

Useful for surveys because it surfaces:

  • Brainboxes devices the dashboard misses: different VLAN, manual IP, you name it. The Neighborhood is broader than the main dashboard.
  • Adjacent infrastructure: the customer's NAS, printers, cameras. Often the customer didn't know either.
  • Anomalies: anything you don't recognise is worth flagging.

See Use BB-Eco as a network discovery tool for the full Neighborhood walkthrough.

Step 3: Cross-subnet? Run a CIDR scan​

Auto-discovery only sees the broadcast domain you're plugged into. If the site has multiple subnets you can scan them actively from the Neighborhood tab's top bar: enter the CIDR (e.g. 10.50.0.0/22) and click Scan CIDR Range. BB-Eco TCP-probes every host on common HTTP/HTTPS ports and enriches each responder with its Server header and page title.

A /22 subnet (1024 hosts) takes about a minute. A /24 is under fifteen seconds. Cancel any time; partial results are kept.

Always get explicit permission

Active CIDR scans send TCP probes. On production OT networks, customer sites without authorisation, or anywhere with intrusion detection, don't run a CIDR scan without sign-off. The passive Neighborhood view is fine: it only listens.

Step 4: Capture configuration baselines for the Brainboxes devices​

While you have access, capture a per-device template for every Brainboxes unit you found. From the desktop app open the device's detail panel → Info tab → Configuration Status → Download Template. Or from the CLI:

bb-eco template export 192.168.1.50 surveys/customer-x/ed-549-ip-50.json

These JSON files become:

  • The before picture for any future change you make.
  • The drift baseline for ongoing audits (see Detect configuration drift).
  • A handover artefact: committed to Git, the customer's IT team can reproduce the device's exact configuration on a replacement unit if it ever fails.

Capturing templates is a read-only operation; nothing on the device changes.

Step 5: Export the inventory as CSV​

In Network Neighborhood, click Export in the toolbar. You get a CSV with every column visible in the UI plus the discovery-source list (semicolon-separated when a device announced on multiple protocols).

The Brainboxes-only dashboard has its own Export button that saves the device list: status, model, name, IP, MAC, firmware version and family. Select cards first to export just those; with nothing selected it exports every device the current filter shows.

A typical site-survey output looks like:

Status,Model,Name,IP Address,MAC Address,Firmware,Family
Online,ED-549,Line 3 sensors,192.168.1.101,00:0A:4F:06:4A:EE,8.25,ED
Online,ES-257,Brainboxes ES-257,192.168.1.102,00:0A:4F:06:46:F8,4.69,ES
Offline,ED-560,ED-560,192.168.1.103,00:0A:4F:06:4C:9C,8.19,ED
Online,BB-400,bb400-panel-2,192.168.1.200,B8:27:EB:99:88:77,2.5.1,BB

Drop the file into the customer's report, an asset-management database, or a Git repo for versioned site records.

Step 6: Cross-reference firmware against the latest release​

The dashboard's status filter has an Upgrade available option that shows only the devices with an outdated build. For a written report, the CLI gives you the same list in JSON:

bb-eco discover --json | jq '.[] | select(.firmwareUpdateAvailable) | {modelNumber, ipAddress, firmwareVersion}'

Output is a clean list of upgrade candidates that you can attach to your report or paste into a maintenance ticket. For one device, bb-eco firmware status <ip> names the version it would be updated to.

Step 7: Hand over what you have​

What a complete site survey deliverable looks like:

ArtifactSourceFormat
Device inventoryBB-Eco dashboard Export or bb-eco discover --csvCSV: status, model, name, IP, MAC, firmware, family
Adjacent network inventoryNetwork Neighborhood Export buttonCSV: every announcing device on the segment
Configuration baselinesbb-eco template export per deviceJSON files, one per device, in Git or a shared drive
Firmware-update listbb-eco discover --json filtered on firmwareUpdateAvailableJSON or CSV: devices needing attention
Network topology notesYour own observationsPlain text: VLAN, switches, VPN, routing oddities
PhotosYour phoneJPG: physical install, panel layouts, label readability

Together these tell the customer not just what's there, but where the risks and opportunities are.

Tips from the field​

  • Plug into the customer's switch, not their access point. Wi-Fi access points often don't bridge multicast cleanly, and SSDP is multicast.
  • Run the CIDR scan before lunch. It takes a minute on a /22. While you eat, the report writes itself.
  • Capture templates before any maintenance. If you upgrade or reconfigure first, the baseline reflects the new state, not the original.
  • Check the timestamps on offline devices. A device last seen 6 months ago is probably retired; a device last seen 30 minutes ago is intermittent.
  • Save your survey directory to Git. Future-you will need it; future-you will not remember what was on screen today.

More resources​