Manage Digital Twins instances

A Digital Twins instance represents a specific physical asset. It inherits its structure from a model, including static attributes, dynamic attributes, topic expressions, and transformations, and populates that structure with real values from the device it represents. Where a model is a reusable template, an instance is the live data object that holds asset-specific metadata and real-time data from the sources you configure.

A single model can serve many edge devices. Instead of configuring each device individually, you define a model once and deploy as many instances as you need, each with its own parameter values. A plant with 50 identical Modbus controllers needs one model and 50 instances rather than 50 separate configurations.

This separation also simplifies maintenance. When a model changes, you update the model once. Existing instances continue running with the previous version until you choose to upgrade them.

The Instances page in Litmus Edge Manager shows all Digital Twins instances running across your edge devices. From here you can deploy new instances, upgrade instances when their model changes, and disable, enable, or delete existing instances.

Instances appear in a table that shows each instance's name, model it was deployed from, project, edge device, edge device status, and instance status. Click an instance name, project name, or edge device name to view its details.

Instances appear in the table when they are deployed:

To perform actions on an instance, open the Actions menu in the instance's row. Available actions are upgrade, disable, enable, and delete.

Deploying an instance from Litmus Edge Manager creates a running copy of a Digital Twins model on one or more edge devices. Each instance runs with its own parameter values, which Litmus Edge Manager substitutes into the model's topic expressions at deploy time. You upload a CSV deployment file with configuration parameters when you deploy.

Open the CSV deployment file and add one row per instance.

Do not modify the model name or parameter column headers. These must match the model definition exactly.

Required columns:

When uploading the CSV deployment file, Litmus Edge Manager validates the file and ensures that:

When you deploy an instance, Litmus Edge Manager resolves each topic expression defined on the model by replacing {paramName} placeholders with the instance's parameter values. For example, a model with Device1 and KPI parameters and the following topic expressions:

An instance where Device1 = Modbus1 and KPI = OEE produces:

Because topics are derived from parameter values, they update automatically when you change the instance's parameters. For more information on modifying digital twin instance in Litmus Edge, see Add an instance and Manage Instances.

To deploy instances to Litmus Edge:

Deployment results appear in Deployment Results. Verify that instances have deployed in Litmus Edge.

Upgrade instances to apply model changes to them. When a model is updated, existing instances continue running with the previous version until you upgrade them.

You can upgrade instances in bulk using the Upgrade Instances button, or upgrade a single instance from its Actions menu.

To upgrade instances:

To disable an instance, open its Actions menu and select Disable. To enable a disabled instance, open its Actions menu select Enable.

To delete an instance, open its Actions menu and select Delete.