What is a connector?

A connector is a small, standalone software application that sits between a lab instrument and the rest of your automation stack. It speaks the instrument's native language on one side (serial, TCP, USB — whatever the device requires) and exposes a clean, standardized API on the other. Everything above the connector — GroundControl, the UniteLabs platform, the UniteLabs SDK — talks to that API without needing to know anything about the underlying instrument protocol.

How it fits together

 Lab Instrument
      │  (device protocol: serial, TCP, USB…)
      ▼
  Connector  ◄──── manages ────  GroundControl
      │  (SiLA 2 / gRPC)
      ▼
  UniteLabs Platform & REST API (Academic, Cloud, Enterprise, On-Prem)
      │
      ▼
  Platform UI  ·  UniteLabs SDK · 3rd Party Applications

The connector runs as a local process on the edge machine — the computer physically connected to the instrument. Connectors are distributed as self-contained executables that you can run in two ways:

• GroundControl: a desktop application that downloads, configures, and manages connector processes through a GUI. The recommended starting point for most labs.
• Direct executable: drop the binary on any Linux or Windows server, Raspberry Pi, or embedded device and manage it as a system service. No GUI required. See Headless install.

What a connector exposes

Every connector is organized into modules — logical groupings of related capabilities. A temperature controller connector might have a TemperatureController module and a DoorController module. Each module contains actions, the things you can call to read values or trigger behavior on the instrument.

Some actions return a single value and complete; others stream updates over time and are consumed as subscriptions.

Every action has a type — Property (scalar read), Sensor (stream), or Control (trigger). The platform UI groups actions into three sections by type; the SDK and REST API expose the type as a field on each action. See the Terminology table for the full model.

Every connector also ships with built-in modules for lock control, simulation mode, and service metadata — consistent behavior across all instruments.

For the full technical model see the Integrate concepts — connectors, modules, actions, subscriptions, and devices.

Where connectors come from

Connector registry: UniteLabs maintains a catalogue of versioned connectors for common lab instruments. GroundControl can browse and download connectors from the registry with one click.

Custom connectors: For instruments not in the registry, you can build your own using the Connector Development Kit (CDK). The CDK lets you write a connector in pure Python using simple decorators — no knowledge of network protocols required.

Next steps

Both paths below install and run connector processes on your edge machine — the computer physically connected to your instruments.

• Install GroundControl: the recommended path for workstations and lab PCs
• Headless install: for servers, Raspberry Pi, and other embedded Linux devices
• Connector concepts to understand the model in more depth