Fleet Management Dashboard Alpha Run Feedback

I waited for that long time…

Please confirm I’m understanding correctly: The only tab in the Dashboard that is working so far is the default selected one called “Logs”. So basically if my devices are not currently using Spark.publish() anywhere in their existing code, my Dashboard will be empty. I won’t even see that any devices exist.

Is that accurate?

So anyway, that Data tab being built-in without needing to interface with any of the many third party services providing similar would be huuuuuge for both beginners on the platform and for those (like me) that are simply lazy and/or pressed for time. :smile: I greatly look forward to this!

Update: Sorry, I hadn’t seen this post yet: https://community.spark.io/t/introducing-the-dashboard-alpha/11125

Hey, @ssstraub.

Yeah, so, you’re correct. If you’re not publishing events, there won’t be much to see in the logs right now.

The dashboard is under heavy development, though, so we will be pushing out new features and updates often. We’ll be getting some stuff for Data out soon. Let us know if you have any feedback for the Data screen.

Thanks!

Sounds great! I will check out the data screen once available and let you know how it works for my purposes.

best thing ever!!
great :smiley:

THIS IS GREAT!!! LOVELY!!! EXCELLENT!!!

I wonder if you guys are contemplating the possibility of having a SCADA alike tab in this dashboard.
You know, one that we can put a couple of gauges to monitor the temperature of our SparkCore controlled aquariums, a couple of buttons to open/close our garage at home, etc.

A simple version of something like this:

Or even like this?
<img src="/uploads/particle/5079/c61b34630c7c8299.jpg" width=“300”>

Oh, and if we could program some emails to be sent from this SCADA it would allow us to let out devices warn us of different statuses or alarms right away without the need to go look outside the Spark Cloud for this functionality.

Yes, I am aware that all the mentioned above can be done with an extra service or a raspberry pi around the house. Just that it could be so convenient to have it on the Spark Cloud!

Again, I’m always looking forward to using each and every one of your wireless devices, and hopefully multiple times.
Thank you Spark Team for having made it so easy for us to connect whatever we wish to the internet!
Gustavo.

3 Likes

@gusgonnet, you are right on the money! We have plas to expand the dashboard to include widget-like tools to both monitor and control your devices from the application. To give you a bit more detail on each:

  1. Monitoring: Now, your dashboard includes a log of events passing through the Spark cloud, and the data associated with each of those events. To make this more useful to you, we are planning to use the data sent with the event to create rich visualizations/graphs. As you mentioned, this could plot the temperature of your aquarium on a line graph over time, show real-time geolocation info on a map, etc. There are challenges here in terms of dealing with the various types and structures of data sent in event streams, so we’ll likely come up with and document a schema to follow if you’d like to see your event data graphed in your dashboard.

  2. Control There’s also plans to use the dashboard to call functions, set variables, publish events, etc. on your device. As you mentioned, this would alleviate a lot of the repetitive work that we all face setting up our own web applications to interact with our devices remotely.

Stay tuned for updates on this! And if you have any further thoughts/ideas definitely let us know!

3 Likes

this can’t be more awesome!
thanks for your answer

Psst: do plans include email notifications or similar as well?

They don't right now, but we are considering simple push notifications (email/SMS/slack/jabber/etc.) for threshold conditions.

4 Likes

Just wanted to let you guys and gals know that the dashboard helped me debug an issue within 15 minutes of having it open. It’s a great idea and I am looking forward to additional tabs.

Quick question, should the dashboard be showing the data contained in Spark.variable()? I have a double and the data comes back as “Undefined”. Is that expected?

EDIT: I just realized that the “EVENT NAME” in the dashboard is the actual double value. I am reading from a current sensor so the numbers just looked random to me.

Do you guys have plans for implementing some sort of filtering on the Dashboard? For example if you just want to see offline/online events or just Spark.Publich() events or even specific Spark.Publish() events or variables.

Hey, @JGist.

We sure do! Filtering is definitely on the todo list. Also, just as a tip for if you're trying to do this now, you can totally use the spark cli to subscribe to events and pipe it to grep to filter by name.

You could do something like this: spark subscribe mine | grep event-name. Hopefully that helps you out in the meantime while we're working on the dashboard.

Thanks!

This is just awesome awesome news. I’m loosing sleep with the excitement and anticipation for this to go live. Now i can have all my devices and sensors reporting into this dashboard.

Good job guys, good job. Its soooo preeeety :smile:

Please see my PM :smiley:

This is such a great idea! Please remember that lots of us are using Chrome OS, and have problem running java.
Thanks, Jack

Will it be possible to use formulas? For example my core measures voltage and current and I can use the formula Power = Voltage x Current in the Dashboard and build a diagram.

Keep up the great work!

That would be super cool, wouldn't it, @hl68fx?

I think for now, we're going to hit the most obvious features first. Things like algorithms, formulas and scripts might be interesting, but would certainly come later. Probably in the form of a widget api or something like that.

Hi, Jack.

We don't run any Java in the browser. We do use a lot of JavaScript in the browser, which certainly should run on your Chromebook. If there are things in the dashboard that don't work on your Chromebook, please let us know by filing a bug.

Thanks!

1 Like

this program is very usefull

Are there any updates on this? I have been trying to use the dashboard, but unless I leave the dashboard open it doesn’t seem to store any data (events from a publish, or communication). I don’t leave the dashboard open all the time, and I do need to reboot my computer at times so having to leave it open in order to capture a history is not really feasible. I’m wondering if I’m missing something. I have a system setup to monitor some machines in my shop and I get them to run well, but then they stop and I end up having to chase down which link in the chain is broken and it is more than a little tedious. I’m using the photon to publish events and variables and then using IFTTT to send out a message or log things to a file. it will work for a couple of days, but then as soon as I get comfortable that it is working it stops working and I have to go back into troubleshoot mode. Having this dashboard working would be INCREDIBLE :). Thanks!

@ewarner77 capturing and displaying historical events is still being discussed internally. If released, it would likely be part of a paid plan. For now, I’d suggest dumping data into your own database if you really need history.

Feel free to check back in with us about this, or provide thoughts as to how you’d like it to work!

Jeff