

Ask HN: Self-hosted customizable dashboards - Karunamon

I&#x27;m asking this here because a few hours of searching Github, Google, and asking around in other places has turned up absolutely nothing usable.<p>What i&#x27;m looking for, in a nutshell, is a <i>self hosted</i> version of something like Leftronic. It&#x27;s a flexible dashboard framework that supports ingesting data from various sites and services.<p>I&#x27;ve got a few JSON-based web services internally that I&#x27;d like to be able to throw up and display on a board for my team.<p>The difficulty is that every single implementation that I&#x27;ve found so far is a cloud hosed, pay-by-the month type deal. For various security and internal political reasons, this is not acceptable; the solution I&#x27;m looking for requires that data not leave the building and ideally not require an ongoing subscription.<p>There would be no problem with paying (potentially substantial amounts) for the right piece of software as long as it&#x27;s a one-off. Also acceptable would be FOSS software with rough edges - we have engineers who know their way around code :) - Though ideally there would be a somewhat user-friendly UI for technician-level users to look around if need be.<p>Is anyone aware of such a project?
======
mattmanser
[http://shopify.github.io/dashing/](http://shopify.github.io/dashing/)

[http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-alternative-
to-...](http://www.quora.com/Is-there-an-open-source-alternative-to-
Geckoboard?share=1)

That's where I started finding some. I've not implemented one yet as my ToDo
list at work is just huge.

Also highcharts, a basic eye for design and some simple javascript will get
you 95% there. Most of those squares are just a big font with a red down or
green up arrow next to them.

~~~
Karunamon
I've actually been to both of these links already, but thank you :)

The problem with Dashing is that it seems like it's a really low-level
framework, i.e. we'll need to basically suck the data out and render it
ourselves down at the JS level, instead of saying "Here's my web service,
here's how the data is delimited, show me a table".

Which is fine for initial setup I suppose, but it's not something we really
have time to maintain and tweak on an ongoing basis. This is more of a "would
be nice" type deal instead of a very pressing business need, so securing
resources to code something together would be tricky.

~~~
mattmanser
They're honestly not that hard to bang out, a quick custom query and at the
very basic level a javascript SetInterval.

It's a bit like shell scripts or build scripts or starting to use a new source
control system, once you've done one any more takes no more than an hour.

It's just that first one that takes a day.

~~~
Karunamon
Perhaps, but if you're not familiar with SCSS and JS, it reads all like greek,
takes a good deal of time, and is a bit annoying that you need to know 5
separate languages (JS, CoffeeScript, S/CSS, HTML, and Ruby) just to render
some data on a page in a somewhat aesthetically pleasing way.

If you're a web developer, I bet this is really easy. If you come from a
systems programming/admin background like me, this looks like a great deal of
work for little payoff.

I'd like to think someone, somewhere has come up with a dashboard framework
that's user friendly and doesn't require forwarding proprietary data outside
the company.

