# Device Operating State (opState)
Every manufacturer seems to like inventing and publishing their own list of error codes. That's great for one off investigations or trouble shooting a specific device, but it's terrible if you are trying to manage a portfolio with thousands of different devices made by many different manufacturers.
The purpose of the opState property is to standardize and normalize the main state or error information coming from all of your different devices. It makes it easy to get a high level understanding at a glance.
The most obvious place this manifests is in the tool tips shown on the devices in the Energy modules Dashboard view (see below, the opState for this device is "Normal" which is good!).
The place where you can see the raw opState information and the associated manufacturer error codes or manufacturer specific operating state information (that opState is often derived from) will be the Power Dashboard. An example is shown below (in this case, opState is derived from the device's sunsOpState information).
The [mapping](https://github.com/SolarNetwork/solarnetwork/wiki/SolarNet-API-global-objects#standard-device-operating-states) between these opState codes and the human readable meaning is as follows:
{% columns %}
{% column %}
Code 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
{% endcolumn %}
{% column %}
Meaning "Unknown" "Normal" "Starting" "Standby" "Shutdown" "Fault" "Disabled" "Recovery" "Override"
{% endcolumn %}
{% endcolumns %}
*Please speak to your Ecosuite support team if you need more information on this topic or if you would like access to the Power Dashboard to see raw device specific errors and operating state information.*
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