Execution & risk · System health
HeartBeat
Know the state of your trading machine before the state becomes a problem.
Monitors NinjaTrader, strategy state, connections, and automation readiness from the machine doing the work.
The 60-second read
What HeartBeat adds to the stack.
Monitor NinjaTrader, strategy state, and connection readiness.
Use diagnostics before restarting or disconnecting automation.
Keep HeartBeat running on the machine that operates automation.
Best used forOperational confidence and diagnostics
Keep in mindDiagnose first. Restarting or disconnecting blindly can create a larger operational problem.
What's in this guide
FLB HeartBeat watches your NinjaTrader connections and reconnects them automatically when the feed or order routing drops — so a silent disconnect never leaves you exposed. This guide covers the dashboard and its controls. What it does Install & activation Opening HeartBeat Settings reference How to read it Updates & support proprietary and intentionally not documented.
What it does
FLB HeartBeat is a connection watchdog. It monitors your NinjaTrader broker connections — order routing, price feed, and live tick activity — and steps in to reconnect automatically when something drops. A silent disconnect is one of the worst things that can happen with a position on. HeartBeat watches for it on every connection and runs a capped reconnect sequence the moment it detects trouble, with a live dashboard showing the state of each one.
It guards three things: Watches Acts when Order routing The broker's order connection drops. Price feed The market-data connection drops. Tick activity No ticks arrive on the monitored instrument for your stale threshold. "The trade you can't manage is the one where the feed died and you didn't know." HeartBeat is a monitoring utility. It manages connections; it never places, modifies, or closes trades.
Install & activation
Install with the Windows Control Center
Download the Windows application, sign in on the NinjaTrader PC, then install or update HeartBeat from the NinjaTrader area. Do not manually import an FLB package.
Download Windows Control Center ↓Connect with the Web Control Center
For any TradingView access included with your membership, open Connections, link the exact TradingView username, and sync the available script grants.
Open Web Control Center ↗Opening HeartBeat
FLB HeartBeat runs as a standalone window, opened from the Control Center. Step Do this Open Control Center New HeartBeat. The HeartBeat window opens; it monitors automatically once configured. Adjust thresholds and instruments in the window (section HeartBeat). HeartBeat has no NinjaTrader property grid — everything is configured in its dashboard window. The key controls are: Setting Default What it does Master Enable On Turn connection monitoring on or off for all connections.
Market Hours Filter On Ignore normal closed-market quiet so it only acts when ticks should be flowing. Stale Threshold 60 s Seconds without a tick on the monitor instrument before a connection is treated as stalled (5-3600). Max Attempts Reconnect tries before HeartBeat stops and flags a locked-out state (1-10). Default Instrument NQ Fallback monitor symbol used when a connection has no specific one set.
Monitor Instrument — Per-connection liquid symbol whose tick flow is used as the Reset — Manually clear a locked-out connection and resume monitoring.
How to read it
Open the dashboard, point each connection at a liquid monitor instrument, and let HeartBeat run in the background. Using the dashboard — Master Enable turns monitoring on; each connection shows a live state (Idle, Monitoring, Connecting, and so on). — Monitor instrument — give each connection a liquid symbol (e.g.
NQ) so tick activity is a reliable heartbeat. — Stale Threshold — how many seconds of silence count as a stall before HeartBeat acts. — Max Attempts — how many reconnect tries before it stops and flags a locked-out state for you to handle. Market hours With Market Hours Filter on, HeartBeat won't treat normal closed-market quiet as a stall — it only acts when ticks should be flowing. Leave it on unless you monitor a market that trades around the clock.
HeartBeat reconnects your data and order links; it does not manage risk. Pair it with FLB Trade Shield so a reconnect can't hand you a runaway account.
Updates & support
Updates for HeartBeat are announced through the Control Center. Use the Windows Control Center to install NinjaTrader updates; use the Web Control Center to manage TradingView access.
For product questions, access problems, or feature requests, sign in to the Web Control Center and open Support. This is the support path for every member, including NinjaTrader users. Create a ticket there and return to the same section to follow its status and replies.