Building a Robot Diagnostics Dashboard with Kotlin and Compose

A developer published a tutorial showing how to build a Kotlin/Jetpack Compose diagnostics dashboard for robotics and Physical AI systems, using StateFlow and a ViewModel/Repository architecture to stream battery, temperature, CPU, GPU and connection telemetry from a ROS 2, Jetson or AI backend. The design keeps hardware-specific code behind interfaces so the Android layer stays maintainable, flags stale data after a 3-second message timeout, and supports exporting structured event logs for support while avoiding sensitive information.

In this tutorial, you will build a practical Kotlin/Android component for a robotics or Physical AI system. The design emphasizes asynchronous processing, lifecycle-aware state, real-time data handling, observability, and safe separation between the Android interface and physical robot control. Android Kotlin + Jetpack Compose ↓ ViewModel / Flow ↓ Repository / API ↓ ROS 2 / Jetson / AI Backend ↓ Robot System data class Diagnostics val connected: Boolean, val battery: Float, val temperature: Float, val cpu: Float, val gpu: Float, val lastMessageMs: Long private val diagnostics = MutableStateFlow Diagnostics false, 0f, 0f, 0f, 0f, 0 @Composable fun DiagnosticCard title: String, value: String { Card { Column Modifier.padding 12.dp { Text title Text value } } } val stale = System.currentTimeMillis - state.lastMessageMs 3000 Store structured events such as connection changes, model failures, sensor errors, and watchdog activations. For production systems, allow diagnostics to be exported for support and debugging, while avoiding sensitive information. StateFlow for observable UI state. The resulting Kotlin layer can be extended with real ROS 2 bridges, NVIDIA Jetson services, computer vision models, smart-glasses SDKs, or multimodal AI backends. Keep hardware-specific code behind interfaces so the Android application remains maintainable as the robotics stack evolves. Website: www.v-modal.com http://www.v-modal.com SDK Flutter: https://github.com/v-modal/vmodal sdk flutter https://github.com/v-modal/vmodal sdk flutter SDK Android: https://github.com/v-modal/vmodal sdk android https://github.com/v-modal/vmodal sdk android Discord: https://discord.gg/K72z28KUx https://discord.gg/K72z28KUx