EMOS Dashboard

The dashboard is a web app that runs on the robot. Open it in a browser and you can install recipes from the catalog, start and stop them, watch their output, and see what the robot is and what it can do, all without a terminal. It ships with EMOS, so there is nothing extra to install, and on a freshly set up robot it is the easiest way to get going.

Open it for the first time

If you said yes when the installer offered to start the dashboard at boot, it is already running. Otherwise start it from a terminal on the robot:

emos serve

Either way you will have seen a block like this, printed by the installer or by emos serve:

EMOS DASHBOARD

Robot identity: rugged-juniper
Reach the dashboard from a browser:
  https://rugged-juniper.local:8765
  https://localhost:8765
  https://192.168.1.42:8765
  https://emos.local:8765

TLS fingerprint (verify on first browser warning):
  8B:F2:0C:...:E7

Pairing code (shown once): 482917
Enter it in the browser, or scan the QR below with a phone to auto-pair.
Save it now — it is not stored in plaintext on disk.

  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄  ▄ ▄▄  ▄▄▄▄▄▄▄
  █ ▄▄▄ █ ▀▄ ██  █ ▄▄▄ █ ...

Three things in there matter. The robot identity is a friendly name the robot picked for itself (rugged-juniper here), and it is how you will find the robot from a laptop or a phone. The URLs are the addresses the dashboard answers at; from the same Wi-Fi, https://rugged-juniper.local:8765 usually works, and if .local names do not resolve on your device (most Android phones), use the IP address instead. The pairing code is what you type into the browser to be let in.

Important

The pairing code is printed once and never stored in readable form on the robot. If you lose it, emos config rotate-pairing mints a new one.

Pair the browser

Open one of the URLs. The first thing the browser shows is a security warning, because the robot signs its own certificate. Compare the fingerprint in the browser’s certificate details with the one printed above, then continue. You land on the Pair screen; type the six-digit code and you are in. The browser remembers the pairing for about 90 days, so you will not have to do this again unless you clear its storage, switch browsers, or revoke the access from the robot.

A phone pairs even faster: point its camera at the QR code in the terminal. It opens the Pair screen with the code already filled in.

Dashboard views

The sidebar has five pages: Console, Recipes, Plugins, Runs and System. You can also jump anywhere, or start a recipe, from the command palette, which opens with Ctrl+K or ⌘+K.

Console

The home page. It shows what the robot is, how it is installed, how many recipes it has and whether one is running right now. The first three installed recipes get a Run button right here, and the most recent runs are listed underneath. On a robot with no recipes yet, it points you to the catalog.

Recipes

Your recipe library, in two tabs. Installed is what is on the robot. Catalog is what Automatika publishes and you can install with one click: press Get on a card and the recipe downloads in the background, then moves over to the Installed tab when it is done. Details opens a page with the full description before you decide.

The catalog needs the robot to be online. If it is not, the tab says so, and everything already installed keeps working in the meantime; the cloud icon in the page header tells you when the robot can reach the internet again.

Recipe Detail

Open an installed recipe to see its description and the topics it uses. Each topic is marked with where it comes from: the robot plugin, a named sensor plugin, a plain ROS sensor topic, or some other topic. If a recipe needs a robot or sensor plugin that is not installed, the page says so and links you to the Plugins page. The Run button starts the recipe and takes you to its live console. Only one recipe runs at a time, so while one is running the button waits until you stop it.

Plugins

A robot runs one robot plugin plus any number of sensor plugins, and this page is where you manage both. Installed plugins are shown at the top, the robot first and the sensors below it, each with its description and a count of the feeds, actions and events it provides, and a Remove button. Below that is the catalog. Install puts a robot plugin on a robot that has none, Replace robot swaps it for another one, Add adds a sensor plugin, and Reinstall refreshes a plugin that is already there. Progress streams onto the card while a plugin is being fetched and built.

This is the browser side of emos plugin. Plugins has the whole story.

Runs

Every recipe run, newest first, with its status and how long it took. Click one to open its console.

Run Console

The live view of a run. Output arrives as it happens, in colour, with a filter box and a level filter for when there is a lot of it, and a tail button to jump back to the end. The pill at the top says whether the recipe is starting, running, finished, failed, or was stopped, and while it runs there is a Stop button. Closing the tab does not stop the recipe.

System

Everything about the robot itself. When a robot plugin is installed, the page opens with the robot: its picture, model and vendor, and the sensors, other feeds, actions and events the plugin exposes. Sensor plugins get a card each. Below that come the install details (version, mode, ROS distribution, the recipe and log directories), what the robot can do (Docker, pixi, pulling and running recipes), and its connectivity, with a button to check again.

The last card, This browser, shows the address to use from another device on the same network, and a Sign out button that forgets this browser’s pairing.

Inviting another phone or laptop

Pairing happens per browser, and there are two ways to bring another device in. Have it scan the QR code that emos serve prints, which fills the code in for it, or open the dashboard address on the new device and type the code. If the code is long gone, emos config rotate-pairing prints a fresh one. Browsers that are already paired stay paired.

Make the dashboard start automatically

The installer offers this, but you can turn it on at any later time:

emos serve install-service

Run it as your user, not with sudo; it escalates on its own where it must. From then on the dashboard comes up at boot as a systemd service, and emos serve only prints the access details instead of starting a second one. To turn it off again:

emos serve uninstall-service

Naming your robot

The friendly name the robot gave itself survives reboots and reinstalls, so https://<name>.local:8765 keeps working. To pick a name of your own:

emos config set name happy-robot
sudo systemctl restart emos-dashboard.service   # if running at boot

Names are lowercase letters, digits and dashes.

Security

The dashboard is meant to be reachable only on the robot’s local network, and it is protected in two ways: every connection is encrypted, and every request needs a paired browser.

The certificate

The dashboard serves HTTPS with a certificate the robot creates for itself the first time emos serve or emos run runs, kept in ~/emos/.ui-security/. Because no public authority signed it, browsers warn about it on first contact. The warning is about trust, not encryption: the connection is encrypted either way. To make sure you are talking to your robot and not to something in between, compare the fingerprint the browser shows under its certificate details with the one from the robot:

emos config tls-fingerprint

Once they match, continue past the warning. To stop the warning from coming back, import ~/emos/.ui-security/tls.crt into the browser’s trust store: in Firefox under Settings → Privacy & Security → Certificates → View Certificates → Authorities → Import, ticking “Trust this CA to identify websites”; in Chrome and Edge through the operating system’s store (update-ca-certificates on Linux, Keychain Access on macOS, certmgr.msc on Windows).

The certificate lists the robot’s name and the network addresses it had when it was created. After the robot moves to another network, or you rename it, make a new one and restart the dashboard:

emos config tls-regenerate
sudo systemctl restart emos-dashboard.service

Recipe web UIs use the same certificate, so a browser that trusts the dashboard trusts them too.

Paired browsers

A paired browser holds a token that is valid for about 90 days. You can see who is paired and revoke any of them from the robot:

emos config tokens                     # list paired browsers
emos config revoke-token phone         # by label, or by the short id
emos config rotate-pairing             # fresh pairing code; paired browsers stay paired
emos config reset                      # revoke everyone and start over

A running dashboard picks up a rotated code straight away. Requests to the dashboard’s port over plain HTTP are redirected to HTTPS; emos serve --no-tls and --no-auth exist for development on a laptop and nothing else.

See also

CLI Reference for the commands behind the dashboard. Advanced users who want to integrate with their own tools can look at internal/server/openapi.yaml for the dashboard’s REST API.

Trouble?

See also

Troubleshooting covers the common bumps: a lost pairing code, emos.local not resolving, the certificate warning coming back, and a dashboard that says “not installed” even though EMOS is installed.