
Show HN: Castor, a live dashboard for your projects - blaget
https://www.getcastor.com/
======
weego
One of the things that really hit home at my last job and that I see missing
from a lot of these dashboards is comparative context. So I walk in in the
morning and we have a dashboard for vists and signups / payments and it shows
lots of visits and no payments. Is that normal? Is that expected or
concerning? Without showing what it was yesterday at the same time or on the
same day last week, or weekly/monthly avg how do I know how to feel about
anything I'm looking at.

I know the answer to that can be "you should know your product" but I'm not
sure that answer is enough.

~~~
michaelbuckbee
When I've built dashboards I usually try and show that by having barcharts of
averages for different time periods.

Example: MRR+ Today, MRR+/Day over last 7 days, MRR+/Day over last 30 days,
etc. It's still not perfect, but it adds at least an element of that "at a
glance" context.

~~~
jaxn
I like area + line charts for this. The area fill is the comp period and the
line is the current.

One of my favorite ways to do this (that most charting packages struggle with)
is to use an area full for last year, a solid line for this year, and a dotted
line for the future based on current trajectory.

You can compare to multiple periods using stacked areas (particularly when you
can assume previous periods had growth).

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koolba
New year, new SaaS dashboard company...

It's nice to see transparent pricing though I wonder how realistic it is.
$4/month for unlimited everything, regardless of customer size? While it's
nice to see pricing thats 1-2 orders of magnitude less that competitors
(seriously look it up), forget turning a profit, you could easily get net-
negative per customer on bandwidth pricing alone.

The trailer says, " _Castor is a service edited by 10033111 Canada Inc. By
using Castor, you agree to our terms and conditions._ " yet it doesn't have a
link to the terms of service. Also, not judging too much but " _10033111
Canada Inc_ " sounds like the name of a company created by a computer that
makes companies.

~~~
xyzzy_plugh
It's a numbered corporation, an easy way to set up a company in Canada.

See
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_company](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Numbered_company)

Named companies cost more, IIRC.

~~~
koolba
Just read a bit more about numbered corporations in Canada. That's a pretty
neat solution to ensuring uniqueness of corporate names. It's like the non-
tech equivalent of a central service issuing sequential IDs.

------
timlyo
Was I the only one who found that website really annoying? Everything
animated, chat popping up when I didn't want it.

~~~
johndoe4589
No you're not. Personally I find it really annoying. I hope this is a fad,
along with the photos showing through "holes" as you scroll down a page.

At least this is a landingpage and not a long form article, but even as a
landing page I feel it is distracting.

Why can't people just make really good design like you'd have in print, on a
relatively static page. I guess it's the medium that calls for it. Hey, we
have Javascript and CSS3 oh my! Let's do something cool!

edit: it's one of those things that looks cool, and is ok in moderation. But
when it's used too much it's just distracting. It calls my attention, but not
for the right reasons. It stops me from being in my own flow and reading the
page the way I want to read it.

~~~
CaptSpify
> it's one of those things that looks cool, and is ok in moderation. But when
> it's used too much it's just distracting.

I always likened it to salt: A little on my food enhances the flavor. A block
of salt ruins my meal.

------
nanoanderson
This looks exactly like Panic's old StatusBoard [https://panic.com/blog/the-
future-of-status-board/](https://panic.com/blog/the-future-of-status-board/)

~~~
andrethegiant
Yep. Glad to see someone else carry the torch since StatusBoard has halted
development.

------
johndoe4589
As an aside, I noticed the above-the-fold design is very similar to
[ElementFE]([http://element.eleme.io/#/en-US](http://element.eleme.io/#/en-
US)). What's up with that? Did this particular design with the slanted line
originate somewhere else or are they the same people perhaps?

~~~
zuzun
It creates a smooth visual flow. Straight horizontal lines chop your website
into blocks. This, on the other hand, separates your content without breaking
it apart. Your link is a good example because it also has these overlapping
graphics that "hang" into the next section. Stripe [1] makes heavy use of
this.

[1] [https://stripe.com/](https://stripe.com/)

~~~
johndoe4589
Wow.. that is a much more striking use of the "slanted" layout. Superb.. it
has a little bit of "materialize" feel to it but without the cold / harsh
aspect of material (imho). Or maybe Material isn't done very well in most
sites / apps I've used (often times they tend to have a ton of space that's
not really "white space", just badly designed empty space.. Google loves to do
this by forcing mobile app layouts into a desktop site).

Also this is a great use of animations. The page is fairly static, and
animations are used in interactions (mouseover mostly).

Adding this site to my inspiration bookmarks :)

------
shefaliprateek
Hey Guys! Congratulations on the launch.

I have a question, if you dont mind. I'm someone, who's been trying to build
out simple SAAS business myself and wanted to understand the impact of using
price arbitrage as a sales strategy. (which in Castor's case is dramatically
underpriced compared to geckoboard and others.)

~~~
wiradikusuma
Just my experience with SaaS, usually they start with ridiculously low price
to capture the market. After you have established yourself, you can increase
your price and grandfather early customers. You can even force your free users
to upgrade to a paid plan by stating that ("upgrade now to lock old price!
limited time only!").

~~~
pc86
That's a pretty strained definition of "force" if you're still offering the
free tier.

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GordonS
Is this pricing sustainable? I just can't see how there is enough demand to
keep this afloat at $40/year?

------
kayoone
What makes this different/better from the million of similar products or is
this some kind of YC company ?

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captn3m0
>If you need more than one dashboard or want to send data directly from you're
app or server [...]

s/you're/your

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pjssjppjs
That's a bad name for selling it in Germany. It is used as the name of Atomic
waste trains [1] here and these were often in the press, because of protests
agains further production of atomic waste and the assumed ineptitude of a
potential final diposal site.

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#Germany](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dry_cask_storage#Germany)

~~~
Kiro
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Castor)

Besides, having the same name as a nuclear waste container seems like a really
trivial issue compared to the usual "your name means something dirty or
offensive in my language".

------
dd112
This looks nice! Can anyone recommend an opensource/self-hosted alternative?
Would really like to set something like this up in the office but would prefer
to host it on my internal network. Plus I like to tinker with things :)

~~~
anilgulecha
[http://grafana.org/](http://grafana.org/)

------
agopaul
The documentation homepage
([https://docs.getcastor.com/](https://docs.getcastor.com/)) has a broken link
("Getting Started with Castor")

------
blaget
Thanks everyone for your encouraging feedback! We've processed (most of) the
bugs + typos, and realized a quick video to showcase Castor
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqvLqeNI9M](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KLqvLqeNI9M)).

We're also working on public dashboards (ie. share your dashboard with
anyone/any device without the need to login) and that feature should be
shipped in the next few hours.

Thanks again!

------
xmatos
promising. it even has a clock widget :-)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtuDS0ntaJY](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EtuDS0ntaJY)

------
AgTech_Expert
How Castor different from any of the other data dashboard alternatives that
exist? Is there anything that sets it apart from its competitors?

------
ishwarn
Noticed a small typo here
[https://app.getcastor.com/#!/login](https://app.getcastor.com/#!/login)

"Sign up an login using an identity provider:"

should be

"Sign up _and_ login using an identity provider:"

Also, uBlock origin is hiding the facebook/google login buttons for me.

------
njx
Congratulations! from a fellow dashboard maker (infocaptor)

You need to add more connections and increase the price. I don't know how many
will take you seriously at $4/month.

------
nrjames
What is the best way to get a web-based dashboard -- Castor, for example --
displaying on a wall-mounted television? Is it possible to do it through an
AppleTV?

~~~
dyladan
I'd use a raspberry pi set up as a kiosk. If you google 'raspberry pi kiosk
mode' there should be a fair handful of simple tutorials.

~~~
nrjames
Awesome - thanks for the advice!

~~~
jonasmaturana
Hi nrjames, I'm working on a small service that will let you do that using a
Raspberry Pi 3 and about 10 minutes of your time. Would you be interested in
super early access? It would be awesome to get some feedback as I'm trying to
solve that exact problem: Get a dashboard on a HD tv in an easy way.

------
wallzz
you should check the readme, I got a 404 error at
[https://docs.getcastor.com/getting-
started.md](https://docs.getcastor.com/getting-started.md)

~~~
pc86
There is also a typo in the first screenshot on the homepage ("PROJET"
heading).

~~~
slantyyz
Not so much a typo as a forgotten translation of "project" from French.

You'll also notice that "state" and "assigned to" were also left in French.

