Unit maintenance: calibration, service log, and condition

What Maintenance is

Every unit in your fleet has its own detail overlay, and Maintenance is one of the tabs across the top of it. This is where the age-versus-lifespan math and calibration status that drive the unit's overall posture get broken out into real numbers, and where you log what actually happened to the unit: a calibration, a service visit, a change in condition. Verinode does not schedule technicians or perform the work. It reads your purchase date, your logged events, and your equipment class, and turns that into a plain read on where the unit stands and what it needs next. You decide what to service, retire, or replace.

Where to find it

Open Equipment from the sidebar at /equipment. Click any tile, unit, or decision on the home page, or open a unit from the All Equipment tab, and its detail overlay appears with tabs across the top: Overview, Specs, Performance, Maintenance, Alternatives, Findings, and, when the unit is linked to a catalog product, Related SOPs and Community. Click Maintenance to land on the tab this article covers. It has four parts, stacked top to bottom: Lifecycle, Calibration, Service log, and Condition, with an Open Tips block underneath when there is anything open on this specific unit.

Lifecycle: age vs. lifespan and calibration cycle

The Lifecycle block is four read-only fields, computed from the unit's purchase date and its equipment class:

• Age. The unit's age in years to one decimal place, for example "3.2 years," with a hint underneath reading the expected lifespan for its class, for example "5y expected." Reads a dash when no purchase date is on file.
• Lifespan used. The same age expressed as a percentage of expected lifespan, for example "64%." This is capped for display at 120% so a badly overdue unit does not blow out the layout, the underlying stance math is not capped the same way.
• Calibration cycle. For instrument-grade classes (pin and pinless moisture meters, thermal imaging cameras, hygrometers, psychrometers), the recalibration interval in months, for example "12 months," with the hint "IICRC recommends calibration on this cycle." For every other class, dehumidifiers, air movers, extractors, truck mounts, and so on, this reads "Not calibrated" with the hint "This class isn't instrument-grade, no calibration logged," because that equipment simply has no calibration requirement to track.
• Last serviced. The date of the unit's most recent logged service event, or a dash if none has been recorded. When a next-service date is on file, a hint underneath reads "Next due" with that date.

Expected lifespan is a lookup by equipment class, not a guess: dehumidifiers run about 5 to 6 years, air movers and portable extractors about 6 to 7 years, thermal imaging cameras and truck mounts up to 8 years, and any class Verinode has not mapped defaults to 6 years so the math always has something to divide against. The full table and how the fleet-level version of this rolls up is in Equipment: your fleet at a glance.

How Maintenance feeds this unit's stance

The eyebrow pill next to the unit's name at the top of the overlay, and the subtitle underneath it, are not independent of this tab, they are the same age, calibration, and condition inputs read through a stance engine that always renders one of five calls:

• Keep. Inside its productive window, condition is fine, nothing overdue. The default, healthy state.
• Service. Calibration is overdue, condition has been logged as Fair or Needs repair, or the unit has crossed 80% of its expected life while still inside 100%. A separate variant, labeled "Buy or Return," appears for rented units running well past the typical rent-versus-buy break-even point.
• Retire. Already past its full expected lifespan, or logged as Needs repair while more than 60% through its expected life. The read is that repair cost is starting to outrun what the unit is still worth.
• Replace. The unit is aging (90% or more of expected life) and a newer model from the same manufacturer is linked in the catalog. The market has moved on to a current-generation unit.
• Watching. No purchase date logged, so there is nothing to measure age or calibration against yet. This is an explicit state, not a failure to compute, log a purchase date on the Overview tab to unlock a real stance.

Each stance carries its own action, its expected gain from acting, and, for the rent-versus-buy variant, a dollar cost of not acting. That triad renders in the unit's hero and in its agent-insight card regardless of whether a linked decision exists in Findings, so a unit reading Service or Retire always tells you why, even before anything has formally escalated.

Recording a calibration event

The Calibration block shows Last calibrated and Next due as read-only fields, then a Record calibration link underneath.

1. 1Open the unit's Maintenance tab and click Record calibration.
2. 2Set Calibrated on (defaults to today; you cannot pick a future date, and the date cannot be earlier than the unit's purchase date).
3. 3Optionally set Next due in (months). Leave it blank and Verinode reuses the interval you saved the last time you calibrated any unit, once you set one explicitly it becomes your new default for next time.
4. 4Click Save. A success toast reads "Calibration recorded" and the form collapses.

Saving this event updates the unit's Last calibrated and Next calibration due dates, and, if this unit had an open Calibration Due tip, that tip clears automatically, you do not need to separately dismiss it. If the interval field is filled in but is not a whole number, the save is blocked with "Interval must be a whole number of months." before it ever reaches the server.

Recording a service event

The Service log block starts collapsed with a Record service link.

1. 1Click Record service.
2. 2Set Serviced on (today or earlier, and not before the unit's purchase date).
3. 3Optionally set Next due in (months), same default-reuse behavior as calibration, tracked separately from the calibration interval.
4. 4Optionally add a note in Notes, for example what was done. Leave it blank and any note already on file for this unit stays untouched.
5. 5Click Save. A success toast reads "Service recorded," the notes field clears, and the form collapses.

Unlike calibration, recording a service event does not automatically clear any open equipment tip, service and calibration are tracked as separate signals, so a unit can be freshly serviced and still show an open Calibration Due tip if its instrument calibration is separately overdue.

Changing condition

The Condition block shows the unit's current condition as a row of pill buttons: New, Good, Fair, Needs repair, Retired. Click any pill to set that as the unit's condition, the active one is filled solid, a save happens immediately (no separate Save button), and a toast confirms "Condition updated."

Changing condition to Needs repair or Fair can move the unit's stance to Service or Retire on your next view of the overlay, since the stance engine reads condition live. It requires the same equipment-management permission as calibration and service events, if your role does not have it, the save is blocked and a toast explains that your role cannot make this change.

Open tip cards on this unit

When the equipment detector has something open specifically for this unit, an Open Tips block appears at the bottom of Maintenance, underneath Condition. It does not appear at all when there is nothing open, there is no placeholder message here, the block is simply absent.

Each tip card shows:

• A colored severity dot (critical in red, warning in amber, informational in copper) next to a short category label, for example Calibration Due, Aging Unit, Newer Model, Rent vs Buy, or Price Drop.
• An estimated dollar impact, when the detector can size one, shown as a copper figure with a period suffix such as "/yr," "/mo," or "one-time."
• A headline stating the finding, and a short rationale underneath explaining why it tripped.
• A Recommended action box in a copper-bordered tile, when the detector has one to suggest.
• Four controls: Act opens the full decision workspace for this signal so you and IQ can work it together; Not now snoozes it using the same escalating-reminder behavior as every other parked item on the platform; Ignore dismisses it outright; and Acknowledge with note opens a small dialog so you can log a reason without fully resolving it. Clicking any of the first three drops the card off this tab immediately, no page refresh needed.

A few things worth knowing

• Calibration and service intervals are remembered separately. The "next due in" default you set while calibrating does not carry over to the service log, and vice versa, each remembers its own last-used interval per operator.
• A blank notes field on a service event never erases an existing note. Notes are only overwritten when you actually type something and save.
• The condition picker only writes five values. New, Good, Fair, Needs repair, Retired. If a unit shows a condition of "Poor" from older or externally sourced data, that value can still display, but clicking any pill here replaces it with one of the five current options.
• Retired units still keep their Maintenance history. Logging a calibration or service event on a unit whose status is Retired works the same as on an active one, the numbers just no longer count toward your fleet-level Aging or Calibration OK figures.

Best-practice example

Say a thermal imaging camera's Maintenance tab reads "6.1 years" against an "8y expected" lifespan, "76% Lifespan used," a Calibration cycle of "12 months" with no recent calibration on file, and its stance pill reads Service. Click Record calibration, log today's date, and leave the interval blank so it reuses your last saved default, that alone clears the open Calibration Due tip and very likely drops the stance back to Keep on your next look, since age at 76% is still under the 80% threshold that would otherwise hold it in Service.

Related reading

• Equipment: your fleet at a glance
• The Equipment hero: active count, avg age, aging, calibration
• The decision workspace
• How benchmarks work
• Forwarding documents

Data sources