Data Management

The data management service is a robust solution for smart machine data handling, data capture, and cloud synchronization. Using the data management service, you can collect data from different parts of a robot, IoT device, or any other machine. Once collected, you can configure which data to securely sync to the cloud, and view, sort, or manage it directly in the cloud without needing to manually gather data from each machine.

Get started now with a quickstart guide:

Collect data (3 min)

Use Viam to gather images or sensor data from your machine.

Or learn more about Viam’s data management features, which can be broken down into on-device and cloud data capabilities:

On-device data management

Manage data directly on your robot, with configurable data capture from various components, automated recovery after interruptions, and secure cloud synchronization for efficient data storage and management.

Cloud data management

Experience streamlined data handling with advanced querying, viewing, and filtering capabilities, along with efficient data labeling and exporting tools.

Used with

You can configure the frequency of data capture individually for each supported component:

Arm

Board

Camera

Encoder

Gantry

Motor

Movement Sensor

Sensor

Servo

Query your data

Once you have synced, you can query the data you’ve collected in multiple ways, including through the data client API or inside the Viam app. For tabular sensor data, you can run SQL or MQL queries against your synced data from the Query subtab of the Data tab in the Viam app.

Permissions

Data management permissions vary between owners and operators. For more information about who can do what with data, see Data Permissions.

API

The data management service supports the following methods:

The data client API supports a separate set of methods that allow you to upload and export data to and from the Viam app. For information about that API, see Data Client API.

Sync

Sync data stored on the machine to the cloud.

// Sync data stored on the machine to the cloud.
err := data.Sync(context.Background(), nil)

Reconfigure

Reconfigure this resource. Reconfigure must reconfigure the resource atomically and in place.

DoCommand

Execute model-specific commands that are not otherwise defined by the service API. For built-in service models, any model-specific commands available are covered with each model’s documentation. If you are implementing your own data manager service and add features that have no built-in API method, you can access them with DoCommand.

// This example shows using DoCommand with an arm component.
myArm, err := arm.FromRobot(machine, "my_arm")

command := map[string]interface{}{"cmd": "test", "data1": 500}
result, err := myArm.DoCommand(context.Background(), command)

Close

Safely shut down the resource and prevent further use.

// This example shows using Close with an arm component.
myArm, err := arm.FromRobot(machine, "my_arm")

err = myArm.Close(ctx)

Next steps: train and deploy machine learning

You can use data synced to the cloud to train machine learning models and deploy them to your machines from the Viam app.

For comprehensive guides on using data capture and synchronization together with the ML model service, see:

Capture and sync image data

Capture images from a camera on your machine and selectively sync images to the cloud with filtering.

Train computer vision models

Use your image data to create and label a dataset and train a computer vision ML model.