# Best practice to manage multiple devices

**URL:** <https://discourse.nodered.org/t/best-practice-to-manage-multiple-devices/14034>\
**Category:** General\
**Created:** [5 August 2019 22:44 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/best-practice-to-manage-multiple-devices/14034 "2019-08-05T22:44:48Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![new\_farmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@new\_farmer](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/new_farmer)\
**Post date:** [5 August 2019 22:44 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/best-practice-to-manage-multiple-devices/14034/1 "2019-08-05T22:44:48Z")

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I have a device which displays parametric data on a main tab, and has 3 additional tabs for configuration of various options, parameter limits, location information, etc. I would like to be able to manage up to at least 5 of these devices from the same Node-Red instance. Currently, I have a device name which I use as the top level of all MQTT topics and on the tab names. I guess I can hard wire 5 different device names and duplicate the flows in additional tabs, but does anyone know of a better way, perhaps a way to dynamically manage this. All the messages are objects and I use JSON on the device to pull the various parameters, so it would be easy to add a device name to all messages instead of in the topic and filter those out at the device and also in the Node-Red flows, but it would still require that I duplicate most of the flows for each separate device to direct to the right set of tabs. I am just wondering if there is a better way that I am missing?

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**Author:** ![TotallyInformation](https://sea2.discourse-cdn.com/flex026/user_avatar/discourse.nodered.org/totallyinformation/32/31_2.png) [@TotallyInformation](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/TotallyInformation)\
**Post date:** [5 August 2019 23:27 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/best-practice-to-manage-multiple-devices/14034/2 "2019-08-05T23:27:06Z")

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Check out how to use wildcards when subscribing to MQTT topics. You can have a single flow that monitors multiple devices.

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**Author:** ![new\_farmer](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9de0a6/32.png) [@new\_farmer](https://discourse.nodered.org/u/new_farmer)\
**Post date:** [6 August 2019 19:00 UTC](https://discourse.nodered.org/t/best-practice-to-manage-multiple-devices/14034/3 "2019-08-06T19:00:31Z")

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Thanks. Then I see I can extract the device name from the topic and use that to drive the right dashboard widgets.