Simplifying machine data management with in-app visualizations

Daniel Brody
Director of Product Marketing

Companies often struggle to gain visibility into their machines' data due to fragmented systems, legacy equipment that lacks data-sharing capabilities, and the absence of standardization across devices. These limitations make seamless data integration and analysis difficult, leaving organizations unprepared when machines underperform or fail. Insufficient infrastructure, high costs, and connectivity challenges—especially in remote areas—further complicate real-time monitoring.

How Viam’s in-app visualizations help

Viam’s in-app visualization feature enables organizations to see real-time and historical sensor data collected from any machine, presented in a customizable dashboard. This allows operators to remotely monitor machines, gaining insights to take proactive action or ensure smooth operations from anywhere.

These visualizations simplify complex machine data, offering a unified view of any given machine. Operators and engineers can easily access relevant information, switch between machines, and track metrics like throughput, production, or cost efficiency. With in-app visualizations, Viam turns raw data into actionable stories, helping businesses identify savings, optimize performance, and promote growth.

Unlocking the business value of machine data beyond operations

Easy access to insights from machine data is not just beneficial to machine operators making quick decisions at the edge. Viam’s in-app visualizations also create opportunities for collaboration and decision-making that can drive value creation, reduce costs, and improve efficiency across the whole organization. For example:

• Metrics that engage stakeholders: Viam’s in-app visualizations enable the presentation of clear, visual summaries of machine performance data to executives and investors. The dashboard being accessible from within the Viam application can highlight key metrics like uptime or production efficiency, providing tangible evidence of operational improvements or facilitating the discovery of areas where further optimization is possible.
• Sales enablement: Sales teams can equip themselves with real-world data to upsell new machine features, demonstrate ROI at existing deployments, or showcase how improvements have been carried out to current customers. For example, visualized metrics from Viam’s in-app visualizations could illustrate how a Viam-enabled fleet reduced downtime by a certain amount or enhanced quality assurance, inspiring prospects to try a product and receive the same benefits as well.
• Collaboration with business partners: Share real-time machine insights with external partners, permitting the shared optimization of supply chains or alignment on production goals. Viam’s in-app visualizations can be tailored to specific metrics to ensure that all collaborators are informed and aligned.

Core visualization features

The Viam application’s Teleop tab supports multiple widget types to display data, including:

• Time series: Tracks trends and system changes by plotting data points over time, such as temperature or pressure readings.
• Stat widget: Highlights key metrics like uptime or average speed for quick reference.
• GPS map: Displays geolocation data, useful for fleet tracking or asset monitoring.
• Camera stream: Streams live video from cameras equipped with Viam’s server, enabling remote monitoring with configurable refresh rates.

An example of Viam’s in-app visualizations with a few time series charts related to monitoring temperature and other variables.

These widgets can be fully customized to create data visualization dashboards tailored to individual user needs, offering intuitive, real-time insights into machine operations.

VIDEO - How to use Viam’s visualizations

1. Log into the Viam app at app.viam.com.
2. Select a machine from your Fleet Machines page and click the Teleop tab.
3. Create a Workspace to start adding widgets for visualizing machine data.
4. Choose and configure widgets (e.g., time series, stats, GPS maps, or camera streams) to meet your operational needs.

A demo video from Viam product manager Jack Damon illustrates this feature in more detail. Watch now below:

Data Visualizations in the Viam App DEMO

Cost and accessibility

In-app visualizations are available to all users for free as part of the Viam platform. Viam is powered by open-source protocols that enable simple, secure connections and communication between machines and the cloud. Viam’s on-machine code is completely open-source. Users only pay for consumed cloud resources when using Viam with our hosted web app. For full platform pricing, click here. Viam also allows you to view the machine data it captures through any visualization tool you choose such as Grafana, as we covered in this blog post.

Ready to try it yourself? Start using Viam’s platform today and see how in-app visualizations can not only simplify your machine data but also empower your teams and stakeholders to make informed decisions. From operational efficiency to more effective collaboration with other businesses, Viam turns machine data into a strategic asset.