7 ms·

Show HN: Simple Dashboards for Internet-Connected Devices

74 points by Bug_Labs 12y ago

istrutnice 12y ago
Saw this last night, very cool!
nemof 12y ago
just a thought, make the examples more prominent. I almost thought I'd have to sign up just to try it, before I finally got to the "see it in action" bit all the way at the bottom of the page.
- Bug_Labs 12y ago
  We appreciate the thought and will consider that. By the way, our examples are all live devices dweeting their data right now.
feralmoan 12y ago
very slick
davidu 12y ago
This is cool, but I think your description is a misnomer. This is a dashboard for Internet-connected devices that provide various readings and status updates. In my world (enterprise security) -- "Internet of Things" generally means the connectedness of many things at scale. So when I saw the description I got really excited that it'd be a dashboard to help monitor a million devices, or help surface intelligence from the temperature readings of 100,000 sensors across a farmland. Or 500,000 energy meters. Etc. That's what will be cool when people figure out how to do. How do you surface intelligence insights and the data that matters from an avalanche of data coming out of 100's of 1000's or even millions of devices. :-) That's a free business idea, because not many folks are doing this yet, and none are doing it well.
- deleted 12y ago
  [deleted]
- Bug_Labs 12y ago
  Great point! Freeboard is great for humanizing a single device, or multiple datasources at a time, but when you get into 100s of thousands of devices, freeboard can be used to visualize an analytics engine. By the way, you can use dweet.io to fill that database or analytics enginge to your hearts desire. Then use freeboard to see what is happening in that database!
  - davidu 12y ago
    Cool, cool. Nice work.
- dang 12y ago
  We changed the title on your recommendation. We also turned off the voting ring detector so this post would be on the front page, because we want to see original work on HN. (All: A voting ring is when people get their friends to upvote their posts. This is against the rules; we want stories because they're good, not because they're being promoted. Also, it's not in your interests. Even when we override the ring detector like this, which is rare, other penalties for ring-voting still apply.)
- grahamburger 12y ago
  I'm doing something similar to that with Zabbix. Admittedly not yet to that scale.
  - dholowiski 12y ago
    But... this could be the front end for Zabbix measurements!
richthegeek 12y ago
I am seeing an opportunity for a service that provides the following, and perhaps it already exists: 1. A unified source of dashboards/dashboard widgets 2. which accept data in one or more known and well-documented format(s) 3. which are largely configurable and themeable 4. which can be embedded as either a whole dashboard or individual widgets This would allow that service to manage all the hard work of actually developing and maintaining the widgets (including stuff like mobile versions, fallbacks, etc...) and means I could just chuck data at a known config. Or, I could define my dashboard to go fetch that data and then have it displayed on the service's (custom branded) page. Sure there are libraries that do parts of this, but nothing that really focuses on providing a whole-dashboard set of features and isn't quite opinionated on both how the overall dashboard should look and how each widget should behave. But for now, I'll just keep writing all these widgets myself ... sigh.
- Bug_Labs 12y ago
  Thank you for the feedback Rich. You can build your own widgets in Freeboard, and once completed, users can share new widgets directly with each other through GitHub. We are looking to build a marketplace of sorts as well, populated by the community, and curated for convenience.
  - richthegeek 12y ago
    In my case it's for a CRM / marketing dashboard, so the data is more stuff like "pageviews over time" or "sales today vs last week". I'm fairly sure that the actual data is unimportant if the widgets and data format are sufficiently generalised. The important parts for me are how style-able the widgets are... seems like everyone is going for these carbon-black dashboards which isn't ideal for most of where we want to show it (ie, not a statusboard on a TV)
    - Bug_Labs 12y ago
      Understood. One of the great things about freeboard is that it is open source and you can change CSS, colors or anything you want on your own.
lazyant 12y ago
I quickly browsed the GitHub repo but I guess I'm not smart enough because I couldn't find the requirements/install instructions/faq to try this out.
- Bug_Labs 12y ago
  Hi, you can try it out directly from the freeboard.io website. Just click on Start Now right on the front page!
  - lazyant 12y ago
    I already tried it thanks, I want to know what it would take to install and play with the (open source) code
    - jheising 12y ago
      Check the repository again. I just updated the Readme.md to add some more docs on loading and creating plugins. Let me know if this helps. Thanks!
      - lazyant 12y ago
        yes, it does help, everything's JS, I wasn't going crazy
        jheising 12y ago
        Yeah it's 100% client side.
donkeyd 12y ago
Because of the lack of documentation I have a hard time trying it out. Haven't been able to get a JSON source working correctly. Do have to add that I have pretty much 0 experience with this kind of thing.
donatj 12y ago
I can't seem to get basic auth working. I know basic is "bad" form, but we have APIs we still expose them selves via it and that would be very nice to support. I tried both Authorization: Basic [hash] header as well as the even worse http://username:password@site.com/api http://username:password@site.com/api and neither worked.
- jheising 12y ago
  donatj, I would expect that both of those would work, but I can check into adding this as a feature. A lot of times this is actually an issue with CORS. The API would need to add a CORS header for freeboard.io. Or if the API supports JSONP, you can overcome this without a CORS header.
zokier 12y ago
Is it strictly read-only? It would seem like a natural extension to make this a complete control center where in addition to monitoring you could also control your devices.
- jheising 12y ago
  Our core focus is read-only at the moment, but yes, command and control has been very much on our mind for a while and I think is going to be a next logical step. Technically you could implement C&C with a plugin right now, but we want to make it more of first-class feature at some point.
dholowiski 12y ago
Wow. This is exactly what I've been looking for. A dashboard for my 'stuff' - which is basically anything as long as it's JSON. Thanks!
aabalkan 12y ago
@Bug_Labs, how did you create the video in the home page? How much did it cost to you? I'm looking for ways to create videos like this and I'm not sure a professional is involved in this one. So here I'm asking. :-)
pauldix 12y ago
This looks really cool. I'd love to pair it up with our work on InfluxDB!
edent 12y ago
Think I may have found a bug. When trying to load a JSON feed which isn't behind HTTPS, FireFox blocks it from being loaded on the board: `Blocked loading mixed active content` https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Security/MixedContent https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Security/MixedConte... In an ideal world, every cheap IoT device would have an valid SSL certificate - but that's a long way off. Perhaps your site should try to proxy the requests rather than relying on the user's browser?
- dholowiski 12y ago
  I ran in to the same thing. I just downloaded freeboard and I'm running it locally on http, no problem.
- jheising 12y ago
  Yeah it's something that is browser dependent. I wouldn't call it a bug, but it is an annoyance. It's a decision we had to make in order to keep Freeboards secure for customers who don't want their data to be seen. But it does require the API to be available in HTTPS as well. It's something we'll have to fix— maybe an option to turn off SSL for the freeboard, or like you say, create a proxy. We'll look into it and have a solution soon.
  - edent 12y ago
    Cool, thanks.
deelowe 12y ago
I'm not seeing any pricing information anywhere. This could be driving people away. I know I personally hate having to do the whole "try before you buy" dance just to find out pricing.
- Bug_Labs 12y ago
  Freeboard is in public beta right now and there is no charge. We will post price information soon, and we will always have a free option, like dweet.io. All current functionality will remain free. New functionality that we end up building may fall into a paid category.
introex 12y ago
Looks promising. Stumbled upon one issue: Gauge has Minimum/Minimum labels instead of Minimum/Maximum I was also hoping to find WebSocket support. While polling works for a lot of cases I expect modern dashboards to update in realtime. Especially considering how easy it is with tools like Pusher, PubNub, Firebase, etc.

74 points by Bug_Labs 12y ago

Saw this last night, very cool!

nemof 12y ago

just a thought, make the examples more prominent. I almost thought I'd have to sign up just to try it, before I finally got to the "see it in action" bit all the way at the bottom of the page.

Bug_Labs 12y ago
We appreciate the thought and will consider that. By the way, our examples are all live devices dweeting their data right now.

feralmoan 12y ago

very slick

davidu 12y ago

This is cool, but I think your description is a misnomer. This is a dashboard for Internet-connected devices that provide various readings and status updates. In my world (enterprise security) -- "Internet of Things" generally means the connectedness of many things at scale. So when I saw the description I got really excited that it'd be a dashboard to help monitor a million devices, or help surface intelligence from the temperature readings of 100,000 sensors across a farmland. Or 500,000 energy meters. Etc. That's what will be cool when people figure out how to do. How do you surface intelligence insights and the data that matters from an avalanche of data coming out of 100's of 1000's or even millions of devices. :-) That's a free business idea, because not many folks are doing this yet, and none are doing it well.

deleted 12y ago
[deleted]
Bug_Labs 12y ago
Great point! Freeboard is great for humanizing a single device, or multiple datasources at a time, but when you get into 100s of thousands of devices, freeboard can be used to visualize an analytics engine. By the way, you can use dweet.io to fill that database or analytics enginge to your hearts desire. Then use freeboard to see what is happening in that database!
- davidu 12y ago
  Cool, cool. Nice work.
dang 12y ago
We changed the title on your recommendation. We also turned off the voting ring detector so this post would be on the front page, because we want to see original work on HN. (All: A voting ring is when people get their friends to upvote their posts. This is against the rules; we want stories because they're good, not because they're being promoted. Also, it's not in your interests. Even when we override the ring detector like this, which is rare, other penalties for ring-voting still apply.)
grahamburger 12y ago
I'm doing something similar to that with Zabbix. Admittedly not yet to that scale.
- dholowiski 12y ago
  But... this could be the front end for Zabbix measurements!

richthegeek 12y ago

I am seeing an opportunity for a service that provides the following, and perhaps it already exists: 1. A unified source of dashboards/dashboard widgets 2. which accept data in one or more known and well-documented format(s) 3. which are largely configurable and themeable 4. which can be embedded as either a whole dashboard or individual widgets This would allow that service to manage all the hard work of actually developing and maintaining the widgets (including stuff like mobile versions, fallbacks, etc...) and means I could just chuck data at a known config. Or, I could define my dashboard to go fetch that data and then have it displayed on the service's (custom branded) page. Sure there are libraries that do parts of this, but nothing that really focuses on providing a whole-dashboard set of features and isn't quite opinionated on both how the overall dashboard should look and how each widget should behave. But for now, I'll just keep writing all these widgets myself ... sigh.

Bug_Labs 12y ago
Thank you for the feedback Rich. You can build your own widgets in Freeboard, and once completed, users can share new widgets directly with each other through GitHub. We are looking to build a marketplace of sorts as well, populated by the community, and curated for convenience.
- richthegeek 12y ago
  In my case it's for a CRM / marketing dashboard, so the data is more stuff like "pageviews over time" or "sales today vs last week". I'm fairly sure that the actual data is unimportant if the widgets and data format are sufficiently generalised. The important parts for me are how style-able the widgets are... seems like everyone is going for these carbon-black dashboards which isn't ideal for most of where we want to show it (ie, not a statusboard on a TV)
  - Bug_Labs 12y ago
    Understood. One of the great things about freeboard is that it is open source and you can change CSS, colors or anything you want on your own.

lazyant 12y ago

I quickly browsed the GitHub repo but I guess I'm not smart enough because I couldn't find the requirements/install instructions/faq to try this out.

Bug_Labs 12y ago
Hi, you can try it out directly from the freeboard.io website. Just click on Start Now right on the front page!
- lazyant 12y ago
  I already tried it thanks, I want to know what it would take to install and play with the (open source) code
  - jheising 12y ago
    Check the repository again. I just updated the Readme.md to add some more docs on loading and creating plugins. Let me know if this helps. Thanks!
    - lazyant 12y ago
      yes, it does help, everything's JS, I wasn't going crazy
      - jheising 12y ago
        Yeah it's 100% client side.

donkeyd 12y ago

Because of the lack of documentation I have a hard time trying it out. Haven't been able to get a JSON source working correctly. Do have to add that I have pretty much 0 experience with this kind of thing.

donatj 12y ago

I can't seem to get basic auth working. I know basic is "bad" form, but we have APIs we still expose them selves via it and that would be very nice to support. I tried both Authorization: Basic [hash] header as well as the even worse http://username:password@site.com/api http://username:password@site.com/api and neither worked.

jheising 12y ago
donatj, I would expect that both of those would work, but I can check into adding this as a feature. A lot of times this is actually an issue with CORS. The API would need to add a CORS header for freeboard.io. Or if the API supports JSONP, you can overcome this without a CORS header.

zokier 12y ago

Is it strictly read-only? It would seem like a natural extension to make this a complete control center where in addition to monitoring you could also control your devices.

jheising 12y ago
Our core focus is read-only at the moment, but yes, command and control has been very much on our mind for a while and I think is going to be a next logical step. Technically you could implement C&C with a plugin right now, but we want to make it more of first-class feature at some point.

dholowiski 12y ago

Wow. This is exactly what I've been looking for. A dashboard for my 'stuff' - which is basically anything as long as it's JSON. Thanks!

aabalkan 12y ago

@Bug_Labs, how did you create the video in the home page? How much did it cost to you? I'm looking for ways to create videos like this and I'm not sure a professional is involved in this one. So here I'm asking. :-)

pauldix 12y ago

This looks really cool. I'd love to pair it up with our work on InfluxDB!

edent 12y ago

Think I may have found a bug. When trying to load a JSON feed which isn't behind HTTPS, FireFox blocks it from being loaded on the board: `Blocked loading mixed active content` https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Security/MixedContent https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Security/MixedConte... In an ideal world, every cheap IoT device would have an valid SSL certificate - but that's a long way off. Perhaps your site should try to proxy the requests rather than relying on the user's browser?

dholowiski 12y ago
I ran in to the same thing. I just downloaded freeboard and I'm running it locally on http, no problem.
jheising 12y ago
Yeah it's something that is browser dependent. I wouldn't call it a bug, but it is an annoyance. It's a decision we had to make in order to keep Freeboards secure for customers who don't want their data to be seen. But it does require the API to be available in HTTPS as well. It's something we'll have to fix— maybe an option to turn off SSL for the freeboard, or like you say, create a proxy. We'll look into it and have a solution soon.
- edent 12y ago
  Cool, thanks.

deelowe 12y ago

I'm not seeing any pricing information anywhere. This could be driving people away. I know I personally hate having to do the whole "try before you buy" dance just to find out pricing.

Bug_Labs 12y ago
Freeboard is in public beta right now and there is no charge. We will post price information soon, and we will always have a free option, like dweet.io. All current functionality will remain free. New functionality that we end up building may fall into a paid category.

introex 12y ago

Looks promising. Stumbled upon one issue: Gauge has Minimum/Minimum labels instead of Minimum/Maximum I was also hoping to find WebSocket support. While polling works for a lot of cases I expect modern dashboards to update in realtime. Especially considering how easy it is with tools like Pusher, PubNub, Firebase, etc.