Competitive Analysis -- Telemetry Dashboard

Owned by Joy He (Deactivated)
Last updated: Jul 07, 2021
11 min read

Skygauge

Using .csv files in Plotjuggler

  • Essentially a primitive telemetry dashboard/clever workflow to create one

  • I talked with one of my friends who does telemetry stuff for work (for a drone, pretty cool)

  • “we use plotjuggler with csv telemetry files”

    • essentially: Throw csv files (spreadsheet with raw values) at graphing program (plotjuggler). program go whirr. program displays graphs/data visualizations

    • csv file = “comma separated values” file

  • How their drone telemetry works on a technical level:

    • Data comes in in byte arrays that a multi-process program parses and hands off to a different program.

    • That program converts the byte arrays of cbor format into csv or spreadsheets.

    • Then a third program takes all the telemetry related csv files and makes a big csv with all the data.

    • Then that big file is loaded in the plotting application

    • This may not exactly be how our telemetry works. The technical details don’t really matter though tbh

  • Basically raw data gets processed a few times into a massive spreadsheet (millions of cells), each cell with a single data entry

    • All the user can really see is the .csv file

  • This file is enormous, and functionally useless to the user. They can’t get any useful insights out of that

    • However, firmware has mentioned that they would like an option to see that raw data as a tab on the telemetry dashboard

Plotjuggler

  • The .csv spreadsheets are then imported into Plotjuggler

  • Open-source, so we can poke around if we wanted to

  • You can create plot setups, so they have a bunch of setups that load once the data itself is imported/loaded in

    • “we have setups for position, velocity, and accel that have targets and actual

    • Then ones for each of the 4 propeller block with the values for the servos and rotor rpms

    • then a page with PID tunings”

    • along with many many other plot setups

  • Each graph below is a “plot setup” that you can just feed data into

  • the data loaded in goes in that left panel and you can drag it in, make new plots on the right, and make different tabs of plots (see top for tabs)

  • friend seemed pretty happy with plotjuggler: didn’t have any complaints/pain points with it

  • does require lots of upfront configuration

    • Our telemetry dashboard should just be ready to go, no configuration required (verify this assumption in user interviews)

    • We will also require other visualizations like battery pack architecture

  • Features he liked

    • can drag to resize plots

    • can make timestamps line up

    • change colour of each line

    • apply filters

    • turn data/lines visible/invisible

    • automatically populates data files into the appropriate plot set ups (just keep file names the same)

    • otherwise, you drag and drop data into the plot setup

      • intuitive

      • dragging is bad for trackpad use – this team is in an office and have a computer mouse. Firmware will likely not have this luxury when debugging the car in the middle of some desert

      • dragging bad for mobility/accessibility

      • good to offer an alternative to drag and drop (ie right click → list of plots displayed in dropdown → select from list)

    • can split up an individual plot into two plots, and lay them out either horizontally or vertically

Customer/Operator Dashboard

Getting Started - Inspo From Other Solar Car Teams

The telemetry system allows us to monitor performance through stored and real-time data (including battery voltage and current, the vehicle power consumption, the power generation from the solar panels, the temperature of the cells and battery pack, the vehicle speed and location, the faults and status signal from the controller, and GPS). In addition, having telemetry data allows us to tailor our strategy, and ideally recognize potential issues and trigger alerts before they become seriously apparent.

The goal is to offload as much work to the more powerful desktop client as possible so that essentially the telemetry board on the car simply wirelessly streams CAN message data out.

Before we start to look at boards from external sources, we wanted to focus on other team’s telemetry dashboards to get a better understanding on the dashboards as a whole. Using the Telemetry Server documentation as references for some so make sure to check that out too!

Near East University

  • They have cleaner lines documenting trends in their data - make sure the data can be filtered to decrease the bumps. This filtered data can also be seen down below in Stanford’s dashboards

  • Near East’s interpretation of their data is likely doesn’t show enough key data points but comparing these to our previous telemetry dash, it’s easier to follow at a glance (especially if we are showing many lines on one graph)

Stanford

Older Dashboard

Newer Dashboard

  • If you take a look at Stanford’s old board (left) in comparison to their new board (right), you can see that they didn’t utilize the space that they had available on their new board.

    • Instead they decided to focus more on the aesthetics. It is crucial that all the relevant data is shown first before figuring out how you want to present this on the board.

    • The old board may seem outdated by design, but it was easy to read already and provided everything that was required 

Delft University of Technology

  • Currently the top ranked solar car team in the world, so let’s see what separates their telemetry dashboard from the rest of the competition

    • To start, unlike the other dashboards that we looked at so far, this one is split across two screens! It allows them to fit all the relevant data with several tabs at the top of the dashboard, while having enough white space and big enough text displays to be readable

    • They also have a tab that opens up a page for their battery and a power flow visualization that allows you to see where losses occur

MIT (Not on the Telemetry Server page)

  • This telemetry dash is a sample from MIT Motorsports (MY20 so pretty recent) which is engineering their Formula SAE car. Although they aren’t creating a solar car and are displaying different information from what we would want, their electric vehicle has a telemetry dash which can be used for references on in-vehicle data visualization.

  • For both of the displays, the text is fairly small and I think they could have gone a bit more intense in the colour contrast between background and generic text (dark grey - light grey).

MY20 - https://fsae.mit.edu/blog/2020/11/18/my20-telemetry-system

  • Good colour contrast in their battery temperature and lap detail graphs although the data seems very condensed for the brief time period displayed on the graphs (about 3 minutes worth of data). Some data points could be aggregated for a more fluid visualization.

  • I like how the stats are displayed at the bottom right of the dashboard (the icons paired with the labels) although there is way too much whitespace. Could have better used their space by either including more stats or increasing the size.

MY18 - MY18 Telemetry Visualization

  • Could have used more contrast in the colours to boost usability (as seen in their MY20 dash). The legend for cell temperatures is useful but they should have added a legend as well for the cell voltage (considering there’s more than one line)?

  • Perhaps they could have condensed the cell temperatures graph towards the bottom to save space for other useful information

Looking at Tesla Owner APIs

This is an API scraper for pulling vehicle information from the Tesla Owner API

https://reposhub.com/python/miscellaneous/lephisto-tesla-apiscraper.html

  • The colour shading under the graph lines, which is a feature used in our previous dashboard, helps to track the trends in the data I believe.

  • The colour could have a bit more contrast on the dashboard but I think there is a really good usage of whitespace.

  • Colour blocking on the vehicle speed/power paired with the number provides users with 2 features to look at. If we are to have an indicator such as this, perhaps we could do some colour pairing like below:

Here is another example of a Tesla Owner API

This is another example of a Tesla dashboard sample (these aren’t professional samples and appear to be more personal projects but we can maybe use them for reference?)

  • Based on prior research, we know that circle/pie charts aren’t great for depicting values so we can either avoid them altogether, leave them as estimations for users, or include a little legend below with the label and value as shown above.

  • Since graphs with lots of data are hard to read, I kind of like the feature where you can select specific x-points on the graph which creates a little box with the timestamp and values at that time.

Going Beyond Solar Cars Altogether… Day-Trading Platforms

We can get inspiration from day trading telemetry board platforms as well, not just ones from solar car teams: 5 Best Day Trading Platforms for 2025

Fidelity

Ranked one of the best platforms to use and provides everything needed to manage a portfolio

Similar to those of a solar car team dashboard, this one also includes various categories which illustrate a preview via a graph or table (left)

  • The dashboard may be black, but bright colours are used to help identify and filter out different trends in the stock market (right)

  • The dashboard uses the most out of the space available and it is easy to read the data, which helps its case when it comes to ranking the best dashboards for day trading

  • Fidelity also offers mobile trading via three apps (Fidelity, NetBenefits, and Fidelity Spire)

  • Has a customizable dashboard as upon logging in, a personalized feed greets you

  • Market cards float on top of varying scenery images and cover everything, from   market news to portfolio to wash list insights

  • The research incorporated in the app is robust and has the same info as what one would find in the website

  • Drawbacks include struggling in the active trade department, which TD Ameritrade strives in

Robinhood

Robinhood Review 2025: Pros & Cons  

  • Optimized for individuals who are new to investing and want to start with the basics, but as you become more skilled, Robinhood won’t be as useful due to the competitive prices and lack of features that other platforms have

  • Minimal compared to other platforms

  • Uses one main colour for graphing data

  • Charts only include four technical indicators, while TD Ameritrade offers over 400 and TradeStation offers nearly 300

  • More information can be shown with the amount of whitespace remaining, but for a beginner, it is easy to read and isn’t overloading with advanced data (simple)

  • The research involved for the data shown lacks behind industry leaders TD Ameritrade and Fidelity

 

  • Similar to Fidelity, they offer a Mobile Trading app, which is fast and simple to use

  • However, there is a lack of filters and optional columns beyond the last price and percentage change

  • Again, uses one main colour, but it stands out and allows the user to see the graph trends with ease



 

 

Tradestation

TradeStation Review 2025: Pros & Cons

Browser trading platform

Desktop trading platform

  • Good usage of colour to depict positive and negative changes in values

  • In regards to the information tables, I prefer the browser platform better for the differences in row colours - grey and black. Grouping and reading information is made much easier with the coloured rows

  • Lots of information to be displayed making the dashboard fairly crowded but all the information is well organized and relatively easy to follow. Using clear borders and style grouping makes it easier for users to tell the differences between sections.

  • The browser version contains less information which allows for more whitespace and a vertical stacking of information which is easier to follow than the desktop version’s more scattered layout.

  • The labels at the end of the lines on the graphs are nice as they can provide the exact value at a glance - this is assuming that we only have a few lines on each graph unlike our previous dash.

TD Ameritrade

Thinkorswim platform

Earnings analysis

  • The TD Ameritrade thinkorswim platform provides an example of multiple graphs on a single interface. Each graph has clear borders separating each other

  • The “hi” and “lo” indicator bubbles might be useful although I prefer the indicators seen in tradestation. Not sure if they’d be useful for the data which we would need to convey but I do think we could provide certain indicators such as those on our graphs.

  • Looking at their earnings analysis page, I like how they use different icons to mark data points on the graphs. I also like the feature at the middle left which allows users to “turn on and off” specific lines on the graph. Could be useful for users if they need to isolate specific information.

  • Again, good usage of colour and contrast in both displays although ideally, the text would be bigger in our dashboards.