Panic Status Board is being discontinued(panic.com)
panic.com
Panic Status Board is being discontinued
https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/
107 comments
That part of the post-mortem is inaccurate.
I was looking recently for a solution to display a status board for a small business on an HDTV. 40" TVs can be found for $180 (you don't have to spend $3000 to have something useful), a mount is $20, and the app is $10. You've got most of the components for $210, but then you have to stomach the $200-400 to buy an iPad which will sit unused taped behind the TV just to display the status board. Not to mention you have to secure it to prevent theft if the TV is on a high traffic area.
The idea that you have to sacrifice an iPad doesn't feel right to me, even though you could get an Apple TV for roughly the same price (< $150), but the Apple TV would provide more functionality (e.g., the Apple TV could be used as an impromptu projector through AirPlay).
They chose the wrong platform for the app. They should have developed it for the Apple TV.
I was looking recently for a solution to display a status board for a small business on an HDTV. 40" TVs can be found for $180 (you don't have to spend $3000 to have something useful), a mount is $20, and the app is $10. You've got most of the components for $210, but then you have to stomach the $200-400 to buy an iPad which will sit unused taped behind the TV just to display the status board. Not to mention you have to secure it to prevent theft if the TV is on a high traffic area.
The idea that you have to sacrifice an iPad doesn't feel right to me, even though you could get an Apple TV for roughly the same price (< $150), but the Apple TV would provide more functionality (e.g., the Apple TV could be used as an impromptu projector through AirPlay).
They chose the wrong platform for the app. They should have developed it for the Apple TV.
They should've sold HDMI dongles (think Chromecast or Roku), with the app baked in, for ~$100. Its easy to monday morning quarterback though; This idea could've failed as well.
I currently do that for in-store displays. Its easy to setup because you can do a nice GUI with a powerful enough board and habe access through SSH if required. I sell it to small businesses as a turn key solution (just add a tv) for less than four hundred dollars. Most have enjoyed good success with it because it allows automatic upsells. Ive yet to use one as a status board but I might give it a try.
There's definitely the market for it, it was part of a job I had in a previous life. (Almost) every company has an IT department and they and their managers like to see cool status displays. It's a pretty easy sell.
Ive thought about it but it requires a certain level of technical capabilities on the businesse's side. Truth is that most businesses run on shitty old windows machines that dont get updated. Integrating with those systems requires building an infrastructure for them and then selling at a low price because they dont see the value in IT. That's why I sell it as a self contained marketing/sales tool.
That's pretty cool. Do you have a website? I have questions, and you probably have answers. (Like, how do IT-averse businesses manage the text/graphics/etc? ... and so on)
I dont market it online (yet) since it is an upsell to digital marketing I do. You can email me with questions. I'll do my best to answer. Also on Twitter or snapchat. :)
check my profile
check my profile
I tried to do this with the Chromecast - it isn't powerful enough and has a memory leak causing a crash after around a day.
Yup, for how great the Chromecast could be, it's extremely unreliable. Mine crashes all the time, which makes it about as useful as a brick for my use-case.
Basically a Raspberry Pi zero ?
Basically, but turnkey. Just like I'd pay twice as much for a Chromecast before I'd ever consider spending a moment of time on a Raspberry Pi.
So a Raspberry Pi in a case with a pre-inserted sdcard running the app? :)
Yes. For $500 (not $100).
make it a pretty case, and be sure to include a charger.
make it a pretty case, and be sure to include a charger.
For those saying they choose the wrong platform, beware of several facts:
1. They released the iOS version in April 2013, long before the Apple TV was open to apps.
2. As mentioned by other's, Panic built the iOS version using web views that are not available on Apple TV.
3. Status Board originated in 2010 as a web app that targeted a Samsung display with embedded Windows XP on which they loaded Google Chrome.
I would not be surprised that Panic is moving their internal Status Board tool back an modernized version of what they used in 2010. If Panic felt there was money in it, they could certainly port Status Board to other platforms.
Links about 2010 version:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1177227
https://panic.com/blog/the-panic-status-board/
1. They released the iOS version in April 2013, long before the Apple TV was open to apps.
2. As mentioned by other's, Panic built the iOS version using web views that are not available on Apple TV.
3. Status Board originated in 2010 as a web app that targeted a Samsung display with embedded Windows XP on which they loaded Google Chrome.
I would not be surprised that Panic is moving their internal Status Board tool back an modernized version of what they used in 2010. If Panic felt there was money in it, they could certainly port Status Board to other platforms.
Links about 2010 version:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1177227
https://panic.com/blog/the-panic-status-board/
That part seems to be describing what some companies actually did, rather than describing the requirements. If they say companies would buy a $3,000 display, I imagine that's based on some of their customers saying they bought a $3,000 display for the app.
why not a Raspberry Pi?
https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/#comment-6... is why it wasn't ported to Apple TV.
It could be ported if the potential revenue was high enough, even if it meant rewriting the functionality that used WebKit to use something else. Instead, I think it was more likely the state of the App Stores themselves. The tvOS App Store market is even worse off than the macOS one, and I doubt they would have recovered even a small percentage of the cost of development had they chosen to pursue it.
Apple TV doesn't support WebKit, which I bet is pretty important in Status Board.
I agree that they chose the wrong platfrom. They couldn't port it to to Apple TV because there Apple dropped WebKit from tvOS.
So they not only chose the wrong platform but also the wrong programming environment for that product. I didn't even suspect that the panic board was iOS based, that sounds so obviously the wrong choice I can't even image how they originally came up with that choice.
Of course, if the board would have worked as OSX application (in fullscreen mode or also as webserver serving the board as HTML), you would still need a pricey piece of Apple hardware to run it.
Relying on Apple hardware for a product will likely fuck you over sooner or later but I can see that as a company that only does Apple targeted products, they were either too myopic to chose something else or (IMO more likely) they didn't have the resources or skills to do it otherwise.
So they not only chose the wrong platform but also the wrong programming environment for that product. I didn't even suspect that the panic board was iOS based, that sounds so obviously the wrong choice I can't even image how they originally came up with that choice.
Of course, if the board would have worked as OSX application (in fullscreen mode or also as webserver serving the board as HTML), you would still need a pricey piece of Apple hardware to run it.
Relying on Apple hardware for a product will likely fuck you over sooner or later but I can see that as a company that only does Apple targeted products, they were either too myopic to chose something else or (IMO more likely) they didn't have the resources or skills to do it otherwise.
> Relying on Apple hardware for a product will likely fuck you over sooner or later
The company I work for feels exactly the opposite, we develop a SAAS POS solution that only runs on iPad. It's a lot easier, because we have a consistent environment, everyone runs almost the same hardware, and the same OS version, unlike Android, where everyone runs different versions of android and different hardware.
Relying on Apple may fuck us over in the future, but Android would be fucking us from the start.
The company I work for feels exactly the opposite, we develop a SAAS POS solution that only runs on iPad. It's a lot easier, because we have a consistent environment, everyone runs almost the same hardware, and the same OS version, unlike Android, where everyone runs different versions of android and different hardware.
Relying on Apple may fuck us over in the future, but Android would be fucking us from the start.
100% agree with you. I helped develop an app that's like a POS system for a security-conscious community. The preference was to use android because of the low acquisition cost... but that was thrown out almost immediately because of the hoops necessary to meet the various security requirements.
With iOS/iPad, the team had a working MVP type product done in a few days (most of the heavy lifting was already done in a backend available via API). The MDM solution provided an on-demand VPN capability which took a lot of network activity out of the critical path. All infrastructure build cost very little and took about 2 weeks. We literally made a decision to go on the 1st of the month, and had it in front of the key business people on the 12th of the month.
Even if Apple fucked us, it's fine -- Android would have fucked us 3 times already.
With iOS/iPad, the team had a working MVP type product done in a few days (most of the heavy lifting was already done in a backend available via API). The MDM solution provided an on-demand VPN capability which took a lot of network activity out of the critical path. All infrastructure build cost very little and took about 2 weeks. We literally made a decision to go on the 1st of the month, and had it in front of the key business people on the 12th of the month.
Even if Apple fucked us, it's fine -- Android would have fucked us 3 times already.
> Relying on Apple may fuck us over in the future, but Android would be fucking us from the start.
Sometimes having it tough from the start is good, especially if it forces you to build something more flexible. Not so good if you go on a crusade to fix every edge case specifically.
I'm speaking generally and definitely not "defending" Android here, as the platform does need too much edge-case-fixing which is usually overwhelming for small shops.
Sometimes having it tough from the start is good, especially if it forces you to build something more flexible. Not so good if you go on a crusade to fix every edge case specifically.
I'm speaking generally and definitely not "defending" Android here, as the platform does need too much edge-case-fixing which is usually overwhelming for small shops.
> the platform does need too much edge-case-fixing which is usually overwhelming for small shops
Do you mean that by simply choosing Android as a platform, you're automatically incurring a ton of technical debt?
Do you mean that by simply choosing Android as a platform, you're automatically incurring a ton of technical debt?
It depends. If you want to support a lot of devices / screens / versions / defaults / settings / mods / roms / whatever else I forgot, then, yes.
You can always target a sane subset, which makes the number of edge-cases manageable for a smaller team.
I had a WebView that I used to display PDFs in my application then I realized some versions of the internal browser didn't support opening PDFs. For those devices, I tried to create an intent (Was it called that? It has been so long), only to learn that many didn't come with a PDF viewer at all. So I created a service to render PDFs to images server side. A bug in the browser messed up the layout (pages with both orientations existed in documents and even a humble table layout couldn't make them display reliably across the devices). I started loading the images and displaying them in a native view. Then I had memory problems in some devices. Then I started lazy-loading each page. That seemed to work but users from smaller screens complained about double-tap-hold-zoom thing. And so on...
You can always target a sane subset, which makes the number of edge-cases manageable for a smaller team.
I had a WebView that I used to display PDFs in my application then I realized some versions of the internal browser didn't support opening PDFs. For those devices, I tried to create an intent (Was it called that? It has been so long), only to learn that many didn't come with a PDF viewer at all. So I created a service to render PDFs to images server side. A bug in the browser messed up the layout (pages with both orientations existed in documents and even a humble table layout couldn't make them display reliably across the devices). I started loading the images and displaying them in a native view. Then I had memory problems in some devices. Then I started lazy-loading each page. That seemed to work but users from smaller screens complained about double-tap-hold-zoom thing. And so on...
Thanks for the detailed answer. Went through a similar thing myself with a "hybrid" app. Nightmare.
I agree that in cases where a specific hardware is necessary and you don't want to bundle the hardware with your software, the iPad is not a bad choice.
There might be some annoyances when Apple drops older pieces of hardware that would still be able to run your software but you can't offer it anymore as the minimum iOS target has been raised.
In the case of that Panic status board which is apparently not much more than a webview and having that tied to a particular piece of hardware is really unfortunate.
There might be some annoyances when Apple drops older pieces of hardware that would still be able to run your software but you can't offer it anymore as the minimum iOS target has been raised.
In the case of that Panic status board which is apparently not much more than a webview and having that tied to a particular piece of hardware is really unfortunate.
Specifying Raspberry Pi 3 with Raspbian shouldn't be so difficult, and those things are much cheaper to deploy than an iPad.
Well, the company is an iOS app company. Therefore there was only one possible choice for them, even if it was the wrong one.
Also known as X-only programmers.
How do I create some code to show stuff on a big TV? Well, I know X, so, X it is. How do I create code to run in a supercomputer | satellite | desktop | telephone | web server? Well, I know X, so...
How do I create some code to show stuff on a big TV? Well, I know X, so, X it is. How do I create code to run in a supercomputer | satellite | desktop | telephone | web server? Well, I know X, so...
They are not. They are mostly an iOS and OSX company. So even within their own niche, there would have been options.
"Only one possible choice" is a golden hammer fallacy. I'd say "false dichotomy", but that one goes for two options with no middle ground.
Should have developed it to run on a $10 Chinese HDMI Android dongle and sold it as a plug-and-play "dashboard in a box" for $300 a pop.
Nothing stopping you doing that.
Someone got in before me: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13061517
Agree with the sentiment, very easy to 'armchair quarterback' something like this.
Agree with the sentiment, very easy to 'armchair quarterback' something like this.
The market's definitely there. I used to work at a place that did that.
http://xibo.org.uk/ was another player in the field, open source.
http://xibo.org.uk/ was another player in the field, open source.
> They chose the wrong platform for the app. They should have developed it for the Apple TV.
They developed and released it years before the Apple TV even had 3rd party apps...
They developed and released it years before the Apple TV even had 3rd party apps...
Given how many terrible $3 apps I've wasted money on the $15 cheese is probably a better ROI.
Was about to write the same thing!
I have paid significantly more than $3 for something that turned out to be garbage (side note: Humble Bundle team, you gave charity a bad name). Haven't encountered anything similar while buying cheese.
I have paid significantly more than $3 for something that turned out to be garbage (side note: Humble Bundle team, you gave charity a bad name). Haven't encountered anything similar while buying cheese.
You don't have a device in your pocket that will vend you an endless stream of cheese wedges 24 hours a day though...
That gives me an idea for a startup.
That gives me an idea for a startup.
Shut up and take my money!
I will invest in that!
Well, at least, if the cheese is bad, it still can't compromise your machine :)
Difference is though that there's millions of free apps floating around. There aren't millions of free wedges of cheese.
To a lot of people, paying for software is still a pretty weird concept, and evaluating the "worth" of software is quite hard when there is so much free software around.
To a lot of people, paying for software is still a pretty weird concept, and evaluating the "worth" of software is quite hard when there is so much free software around.
The Panic status board is near to my heart. Back in 2010, their launch blog post was something that inspired me to try and build products for people instead of freelancing for a living.
It's really interesting/sad to read their second reason for shutting down:
> pro users are more likely to want a larger number of integrations with new services and data sources, something that’s hard to provide with limited revenue, which left the app “close but not quite” for many users
Because this is exactly what Zapier, the company I co-founded a year later, provides for free to other companies/products. Integrate once with us and automatically get integrations with hundreds of other apps (750+ and growing).
I love and use several Panic products (Transmit, Prompt, Firewatch) and hope this end-of-life enables them to spend more time on new ideas.
It's really interesting/sad to read their second reason for shutting down:
> pro users are more likely to want a larger number of integrations with new services and data sources, something that’s hard to provide with limited revenue, which left the app “close but not quite” for many users
Because this is exactly what Zapier, the company I co-founded a year later, provides for free to other companies/products. Integrate once with us and automatically get integrations with hundreds of other apps (750+ and growing).
I love and use several Panic products (Transmit, Prompt, Firewatch) and hope this end-of-life enables them to spend more time on new ideas.
I found Zapier's integrations to be very narrow (e.g., hitting only one major use case at best) and cost prohibitive.
The concept sounded really cool, but then when it came down to actually using in production I had a hard time arguing with myself: "Eh, why not spend a night or two just building out this integration ourselves the exact way we want instead of wasting that much money on something that doesn't even completely fit the bill."
The subscription SaaS cost quickly supersedes the developer cost in a matter of a few months, although I suppose it could have some niche uses with a proof of concept/MVP.
The concept sounded really cool, but then when it came down to actually using in production I had a hard time arguing with myself: "Eh, why not spend a night or two just building out this integration ourselves the exact way we want instead of wasting that much money on something that doesn't even completely fit the bill."
The subscription SaaS cost quickly supersedes the developer cost in a matter of a few months, although I suppose it could have some niche uses with a proof of concept/MVP.
> The subscription SaaS cost quickly supersedes the developer cost in a matter of a few months
That is emphatically not my experience. Developers consistently underestimate how expensive they are and how long things take to do.
Even if you ignore the up-front development cost, I probably spend more than 15 minutes a month on maintaining any integrations I write. That time alone more than covers Zapier's cost ($20/m to start).
That is emphatically not my experience. Developers consistently underestimate how expensive they are and how long things take to do.
Even if you ignore the up-front development cost, I probably spend more than 15 minutes a month on maintaining any integrations I write. That time alone more than covers Zapier's cost ($20/m to start).
Are you seriously telling the founder of Zapier that the product sucks and will never see success? I think Zapier is amazing and I know plenty of people that feel the same. It's not some obscure thing.
No, I'm sharing why Zapier didn't work for me. Hope they have all the success in the world.
I don't think this response is warranted, and this is not what he's saying. He's merely illustrating why it didn't work for him.
A night or two. Thats how a months long project starts.
You have a valid reason for not using Zapier today because you know how to write code (though some still do).
The majority of Zapier users are not engineers. They can't make that trade-off decision. Their trade-off is instead "should I use Zapier or just not do X at all?"
I'd guess many of Panic board's users chose the latter (not do X at all) given they cited lack of integrations as one reason for shutting down.
The majority of Zapier users are not engineers. They can't make that trade-off decision. Their trade-off is instead "should I use Zapier or just not do X at all?"
I'd guess many of Panic board's users chose the latter (not do X at all) given they cited lack of integrations as one reason for shutting down.
Well, I know how to write code and I still barely use Zapier because I value my time, IFTTT is "good enough" for most things, and also porting all my IFTTT recipes would cost me -way- too much a month.
Not a complaint about Zapier, mind, just that "you can code" isn't a great argument on this point.
Not a complaint about Zapier, mind, just that "you can code" isn't a great argument on this point.
Our non-developers love it. They tend to set up quick trials of new integrations, often building new processes with Google Forms, Zapier and Slack. The ones that become important/expensive enough we build in house, but most never make it that far and would be a waste of engineering resources to build.
Anyone know other good alternatives to this project? I've used the open-source Freeboard project[1] before, but curious what else is out there.
[1] https://github.com/Freeboard/freeboard
[1] https://github.com/Freeboard/freeboard
My employer has open-sourced our internal dashboarding platform, Cyclotron[1]. It has a responsive grid layout, data sources, widgets, multiple pages, etc. We've been using it internally for the past few years, and it's still in active development.
[1] http://www.cyclotron.io/
(Disclaimer: I'm the developer, happy to answer questions.)
[1] http://www.cyclotron.io/
(Disclaimer: I'm the developer, happy to answer questions.)
This looks really cool. I posted a question under the Freeboard recommendation because I just want something for the LAN only. Many of the other seem to be subscription services and for me, that's overkill.
I'm going to check it out when I get some free cycles, maybe over Christmas.
I'm going to check it out when I get some free cycles, maybe over Christmas.
We have used Grafana in some major client cases.
https://grafana.net/
https://grafana.net/
In the windows world I would recommend Power BI [1].
Our nightly test server generates a lot of performance metrics which are stored in an excel file. We upload the excel to OneDrive and Power BI periodically refreshes a report dashboard which we display on a large screen within a browser.
The designer (Power BI Desktop) is really nice. The data aggregation and shaping is powerful. The only drawback we experienced is that the provided visualizations [2] are sometimes a bit limited, there are custom ones [3] with varying quality though.
You need Power BI Pro for this auto-sync scenario, but we got such a license for free through our msdn account.
[1]: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
[2]: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-se...
[3]: https://app.powerbi.com/visuals
Our nightly test server generates a lot of performance metrics which are stored in an excel file. We upload the excel to OneDrive and Power BI periodically refreshes a report dashboard which we display on a large screen within a browser.
The designer (Power BI Desktop) is really nice. The data aggregation and shaping is powerful. The only drawback we experienced is that the provided visualizations [2] are sometimes a bit limited, there are custom ones [3] with varying quality though.
You need Power BI Pro for this auto-sync scenario, but we got such a license for free through our msdn account.
[1]: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/
[2]: https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/powerbi-se...
[3]: https://app.powerbi.com/visuals
What kind of additional chart types are you looking for? I'm building a power pivot like desktop tool and find people often would like more variety of chart types besides bar, line, scatters and heatmaps, but I can't determine if it's because of aesthetics or there is analyses they can't perform with standard charts.
There is OpenMCT from NASA:
https://nasa.github.io/openmct/
https://nasa.github.io/openmct/
Dashing from Etsy: http://dashing.io/
Dashing is sadly abandoned. [0]
[0] https://github.com/Shopify/dashing/issues/711
[0] https://github.com/Shopify/dashing/issues/711
Indeed. Is https://github.com/talpor/django-dashing/ any healthier?
This fork looks actively maintained: https://github.com/SmashingDashboard/smashing
We use dashing at my workplace extensively. From my research into the space a year ago, dashing is the one with the largest library of plugins [0], and its super easy to make your own- here's mine [1].
[0] https://github.com/Shopify/dashing/wiki/Additional-Widgets
[1] https://github.com/aysark/dashing-timeline
[0] https://github.com/Shopify/dashing/wiki/Additional-Widgets
[1] https://github.com/aysark/dashing-timeline
+1 for dashing [1]
While not actively maintained by Shopify anymore it's working really well, has easy setup and allows you to get up and running quickly.
The grid system and basic widgets provide a good and clean starting point, although you probably want to invest some time to make it visually coherent if you're using a large amount of third-party plugins.
Our team is using it for polled data that is updated once an hour up to every minute and it's working great for us.
[1] http://dashing.io
While not actively maintained by Shopify anymore it's working really well, has easy setup and allows you to get up and running quickly.
The grid system and basic widgets provide a good and clean starting point, although you probably want to invest some time to make it visually coherent if you're using a large amount of third-party plugins.
Our team is using it for polled data that is updated once an hour up to every minute and it's working great for us.
[1] http://dashing.io
Dashing seems eye-appealing to start and there are many widgets, however most are abandoned like Dashing. IMHO Dashing has an awkward syntax to add or extend widgets which is why it dropped off.
That's one of the reasons I updated Godot [0] (similar to Ruby's Riemann), a NodeJS stream processor, and re-ported Riemann's dash [1] to match.
You can send any event into the stream processor including any metadata, and receive it into any of the dash widgets, such as Title, List, Grid, Knob, Timeseries, and many more. I use it to monitor anything from active container instances to queue stats to CPU wait times.
It's really similar to Dashing, in fact I ported the Knob directly from Dashing, but it's much much easier to add a data source.
As a bonus any event can trigger a Slack, email, SMS, or webhook.
If you have any trouble getting running just open an issue, the docs still have a few holes.
[0]: https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2
[1]: https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2-dash
That's one of the reasons I updated Godot [0] (similar to Ruby's Riemann), a NodeJS stream processor, and re-ported Riemann's dash [1] to match.
You can send any event into the stream processor including any metadata, and receive it into any of the dash widgets, such as Title, List, Grid, Knob, Timeseries, and many more. I use it to monitor anything from active container instances to queue stats to CPU wait times.
It's really similar to Dashing, in fact I ported the Knob directly from Dashing, but it's much much easier to add a data source.
As a bonus any event can trigger a Slack, email, SMS, or webhook.
If you have any trouble getting running just open an issue, the docs still have a few holes.
[0]: https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2
[1]: https://github.com/nextorigin/godot2-dash
Atlasboard from Atlassian:
http://atlasboard.bitbucket.org/
Plenty of commits in 2016 ... seems to be actively maintained: https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/atlasboard/commits/all
Plenty of commits in 2016 ... seems to be actively maintained: https://bitbucket.org/atlassian/atlasboard/commits/all
Freeboard looks neat. Do you know if the github code is all you need to get started? I'd like to make a little personal dashboard that displays my agenda for today from my calendar, a live feed from a webcam on my LAN, a clock, and maybe the current weather conditions. I don't want to subscribe to a service and I don't want the dashboard accessible from anywhere but the LAN. Is Freeboard something I could use?
While not an exact match in functionality, Cluvio (https://www.cluvio.com) is a similar product that allows you to quickly build beautiful interactive dashboards based on SQL queries (and optional R processing).
It is a platform for analyzing primarily business data, but it still may be of a lot of value for current statusboard customers.
Disclaimer: I am one of the founders.
It is a platform for analyzing primarily business data, but it still may be of a lot of value for current statusboard customers.
Disclaimer: I am one of the founders.
You can look at Google Data Studio. It is early days and it is Google, but looks promising for some of my needs.
https://www.google.com/analytics/data-studio/
https://www.google.com/analytics/data-studio/
+1 Infocaptor [http://www.infocaptor.com]
Simple Grids to powerful visualizations. Connects with all standard SQL databases
Simple Grids to powerful visualizations. Connects with all standard SQL databases
I always thought that Metabase ( http://www.metabase.com/ ) looks promising.
I was going to suggest Numerous app, but it looks like they have shut down as well. Musn't be enough demand or money in dashboard apps, it seems?!?
I'm also curious as to what alternatives exist. Am often asked by clients to recommend a web dashboard framework.
kibana?
Kibana can only connect to an Elasticsearch backend, usually with Logstash to parse/format the data.
So I don't think it would fit in the use cases from other people in this thread.
So I don't think it would fit in the use cases from other people in this thread.
That's a business model problem. Your $10 app is being used to drive a dedicated $3000 display. So what do you do? Sell integrated display and app systems? It works for Bloomberg. You don't have to use Bloomberg's hardware any more, but you don't save much by not doing so.
They themselves say it's a business model problem. It's pretty easy to infer they have absolutely no interest in selling integrated display/app combos.
It's a huge pain. Now you have inventory, shipping, and service to deal with, while the market is tiny. Still, they probably could sell the app in a box with a Beaglebone or Raspberry Pi inside and an HDMI connector.
How about: ask for more! For enterprise there is no difference between $10 and $200 - the person setting it up cost >$500 anyway. So why not make 20x more and maybe finance your development properly?
I think people are very reluctant to spend more than $3 in the iOS App Store. Speaking of which, setting up a separate Apple ID for a status board seems like a huge hassle. Whose credit card do you set it up with?
We are not talking about "people", but about "enterprise". Also, don't use iOS app store as advertising channel, just as your payment processor. Might be a bit unusual, but it pays to check.
Not sure what you mean by separate Apple ID?
EDIT: clarity.
Not sure what you mean by separate Apple ID?
EDIT: clarity.
I mean that opening the App Store puts the employee into the consumer mode of thinking. Sure, it helps if you can convince them to buy before hand so they are already expecting to pay $100 when they open the App Store.
With separate Apple ID I mean that you will have to register a new Apple ID for the iPad you will be hiding behind a TV screen. Somebody will need to manage that, and you have to worry about somebody stealing the iPad and spending thousands on smurf berries.
With separate Apple ID I mean that you will have to register a new Apple ID for the iPad you will be hiding behind a TV screen. Somebody will need to manage that, and you have to worry about somebody stealing the iPad and spending thousands on smurf berries.
Do you mean Bloomberg monitors? How do they compare with other displays in cost and quality?
The Bloomberg business model isn't selling hardware, it's offering a hardware/software/service combo for a yearly fee. The hardware is 'free' once you agree to pay them ~$20k/user/year
> Sell integrated display and app systems? It works for Bloomberg.
Now you need a hardware support division, you need to buy, configure, and ship hardware, handle returns, etc. and hardware is low margin compared to software so there's little real profit to be made.
Now you need a hardware support division, you need to buy, configure, and ship hardware, handle returns, etc. and hardware is low margin compared to software so there's little real profit to be made.
> and hardware is low margin compared to software so there's little real profit to be made.
When you sell turn-key integrated products like that, you tend to sell the integrated hardware at a much higher margin than if you were just selling the hardware itself, because you don't break out individual component prices.
When you sell turn-key integrated products like that, you tend to sell the integrated hardware at a much higher margin than if you were just selling the hardware itself, because you don't break out individual component prices.
You can give the margins a serious boost if you turn it into an integrated platform though. There's for example some teleconferencing televisions at my office - TV on wheels, camera on top. I wouldn't be surprised if those cost $10K, with the hardware itself being at most $2K in retail value.
Releasing this on iPad instead of being a webapp never made any sense what so ever. In a post disposable single board computer world it gets even more ridiculous.
Wonder if this is a case of the wrong pricing model? Status Board sold for $9.99, perhaps they should have made it free in the app store, but require a monthly subscription for data and integrations.
The monthly fees could also fund development of more 3rd party integrations.
The monthly fees could also fund development of more 3rd party integrations.
I think that there's more and more of an argument against one-time purchases for apps that want continued development.
If all the digital artists in the world buy Photoshop, in order for Adobe to justify continued support, they have to add marketable features. There's not nearly as much of an incentive to support software. It all goes into features.
If all the digital artists in the world buy Photoshop, in order for Adobe to justify continued support, they have to add marketable features. There's not nearly as much of an incentive to support software. It all goes into features.
I think the need to constantly add more and more features to software isn't necessarily a good thing. I think there are lots of software packages that should slip into a maintenance mode.
For anyone looking for an alternative geckoboard has the most integrations I've seen, whilst still looking visually appealing.
I found others to look so boring and didn't have time to spend styling it and making new widgets.
I found others to look so boring and didn't have time to spend styling it and making new widgets.
Admittedly it looks fantastic, but that's significant price tag.
Damn. I've used Status Board for a while and love its simplicity. Shame to see so many dashboard apps closing down this year. 2016 is definitely not 'Year of the Dashboard'...
Inspired by Panic Status Board and dismayed that it was not open source, I tried to create my own, in php (not sure if the code is floating out there somewhere) and man, it's bad to see such a great product go. Seriously, so good it inspires one to write better looking software.
We have been looking into a good solution for our office dashboard last month. Evaluated a lot of solutions like Geckoboard, but eventually ended up using Databox.com. Beautiful dashboards and also mobile apps.
> as we’ve learned the hard way over the past couple of years, there’s not a lot of overlap right now between “pro” and “iOS”.
There's not a lot of overlap right now between "pro" and "Apple, Inc." Right now I'd reckon Apple sees the puck heading for the laziest leisure class the world has ever known.
There's not a lot of overlap right now between "pro" and "Apple, Inc." Right now I'd reckon Apple sees the puck heading for the laziest leisure class the world has ever known.
I do this irrational stuff all the time. $15 for a wedge of cheese I haven't tried before - yap totally fine. A $2.59 app - hmm, yeah, not sure, think about for 5 minutes, read reviews, seems expensive, what if I don't like it, pass...
I know it is ridiculous and I see me doing it, but it still happens.