Decisions › D03
A small chip in the top bar opens one window: an entity tree beside its detail
Context
After round 1 Zach marked up 14 screenshots of other tools. The design report grouped them by what each one added, and set them against about 50 tools that already do part of this (Clearpath's Cockpit, ros2_medkit, rqt_robot_monitor, Greenwave Monitor, RealSense Viewer, Phoenix Tuner, a Home Assistant device page).
The decision
The entry point is a small chip in the top bar that opens a window. It is not inside Ubuntu's Quick Settings. The window is an entity tree on the left (icon, status, name, id or count, with search on top) and a detail panel on the right at the level of RealSense Viewer: what it is, how it is connected, a few simple utilities, and no robot control.
The same tree flips to a table with the nested first column and aligned columns to the right (status, message, rate measured against expected, last seen, firmware, errors). An activity log runs beside them.
On 23 October the chip lost its text: the tray shows just the face with a status dot, red over amber over grey, and no dot when everything is fine. The strip of recent activity over the panes was removed, so a problem now lives in its own row, the tray, the entity's “What to check” and the Activity screen.
Why
“Ok I think this is a nice simple layout... basically a bar on the left... perhaps like a search bar on top and then you click it and you get more details”
Zach Yamaoka, notes, 22 Oct 2026
“I wouldn't put it on the built in ubunut thing but thats an even more compact entry point there:”
Zach Yamaoka, notes, 22 Oct 2026
“If you click onsomething on the left hand panel then it allows you to see more detail on the right”
Zach Yamaoka, notes, 22 Oct 2026
“I almost imagine that possible you can turn it into more of like a table view for fast high level overview:”
Zach Yamaoka, notes, 22 Oct 2026
“You plug in a device and want to see that it's plugged in, what its ID is, what its version is, whether a software update is needed”
Zach Yamaoka, 21 Oct 2026
“There should be a top bar tray and also a full window”
Zach Yamaoka, notes, 23 Oct 2026
“get rid of this activity stream here at the top”
Zach Yamaoka, 23 Oct 2026
Options considered
Round 1 compared five surfaces (see the first shape). The design report also weighed one reuse option.
| Option | Verdict | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Quick Settings device list | Rejected | Zach: not in the built-in menu. A shell extension is also pinned to one GNOME version. |
| A tray that is the whole interface | Superseded | Text-only rows cannot carry sources, ages or a table. |
| Reuse Lichtblick as the whole dashboard | Kept as a second view | It already renders diagnostics, but has no plug events, no update or action buttons and no USB skeleton. RobotDx emits the standard records so Lichtblick works beside it. |
| A chip that opens one window | Chosen | Matches the screenshots Zach picked: a bar on the left, search on top, click for detail. |
Consequences
- The scope is stated: plug something in and see it; versions, update available, read-only configuration, communication health and a few registered utilities. It works before any robot stack runs.
- Out of scope for now: software components, and a CAD view that paints statuses onto links.
- The window and the tray are two views of one process, so the chip can only say what the window says.
Evidence
- IO diagnostics: the converged designReport, 2026-10-22. Evidence for this decision.
- IO diagnostics v1: the first end-to-end buildReport, 2026-10-22. Evidence for this decision.
- IO diagnostics: converged designContract doc, 2026-10-22. Scope, layout, the two planes, port ownership, the contract and the open question about reusing Lichtblick.
- IO diagnostics v1: build planContract doc, 2026-10-22. The decisions, the plugin boundary (a subprocess speaking JSON lines), the lanes, and the interfaces frozen between them.
Commits in the app's repository (private):
19636d92026-10-22 V6 converged: entity tree plus detail, table mode, activity log and chip999398f2026-10-23 Top bar: just the face with a status dotde3c6e22026-10-23 No attention list over the panes