Why You Should Go for Grafana

Explore the main characteristics of Grafana, the open source analytics and visualisation tool for application in the Internet of Things, and see how it compares with other similar popular tools.

- Dr Dharmendra Patel

Grafana is a well-known open source Internet of Things (IoT) analytics and visualisation tool that allows users to view, query, and analyse data from a wide range of sources. Its user-friendly interface makes it possible to create a highly customisable dashboard with a variety of graph types. Its key features are:

Greater flexibility: Grafana has excellent flexibility in the integration of numerous data sources. It supports many databases and platforms, such as MQTT brokers, Prometheus, Elasticsearch, and InfluxDB. Highly customisable dashboards with a rich set of visualisation options also have plugins for specialised needs.

Real-time visualisation: Grafana's real-time visualisation feature shows data that changes in real time as it is created or received from the data source. It supports a variety of data sources that can provide real-time data — for example, Prometheus for monitoring metrics, InfluxDB for time-series databases, and MQTT for IoT data. It also provides various panels that support real-time updates, and supports streaming through built-in live features, web sockets and HTTP APIs.

Scalability: Grafana is suitable for both small projects and enterprise-level IoT deployments. It handles large volumes of IoT data efficiently without affecting the performance of the system.

Extensible with open source characteristics: Grafana's open source nature enables developers and businesses to utilise it without incurring licence fees. Use of the core Grafana software is free and open source. It is extensible as it can be tailored with plugins for custom panels and data sources.

Easy to use and operate: An easy-to-use interface allows dashboard creation and management without requiring a lot of coding expertise.