Skip to main content

Create a dashing.io dashboard on nitrous.io

Dashing.io is a simple ruby based dashboard creation tool with live updates and high quality graphics that look great on HD TVs.

Nitrous.io is a free cloud (browser based) Integrated Development Environment (IDE). I use the free package for this demo and that will work out to be adequate for what we are about to do.

We will walk through the steps of creating a new account on Nitrous.io, creating and running a sample dashing.io dashboard on Nitrous.io.

Step 1: Create an account or login with GitHub account



Step 2: Get Started:


Select 'Ruby on Rails' container

Give it a cool name

Step 3: Select a Plan

I would stick with the free one for this demo.

Step 4: Start the workspace

Step 5: Start the container

Step 6: Open the IDE


Step 7: Install dashing gem

Execute the following commands in the console section in the bottom of the IDE.

gem install dashing
gem install bundler




Step 8: Create a new dashboard

Execute the following commands to create a new dashboard.

#Create a dashboard named ai_dash
dashing new ai_dash


#Change to the dashboard directory
cd ai_dash

#Bundle
bundle install


Step 9: Start the dashboard

#Start the dashboard

dashing start 

Step 10: Configure preview port

Click on 'Preview' menu and 'Configure Ports'


Configure workspace port 3030 to forward to container port 3030. Clicking 'Apply Changes' will restart the container with port 3030 configured.

Step 11: Restart dashing from console. Click on 'Preview' -> Port 3030.

Ta da.


Have fun!


Popular posts from this blog

A @trello board to get kids excited

My 8 year old just started his summer break. He did so well in school and I am proud of him. He skipped second grade, got into the gold honor roll in every quarter and got a medal for doing that. Last night, I promised to install a new app for him on his iPad mini. I installed Trello and created a board for him while he watched. I showed him how to create cards, add labels to them and move them from To Do, to Doing to Done. I had him create some cards and label them. He could not stop creating cards. I could not convince him to go to bed after that. He created cards for everything he wants to do in the summer and he is not done with creating cards. He even created a card to email a screenshot of his Trello board to his teacher. Later last night, he was still awake in bed when I checked on him. He told me that he wanted to add three more labels - Math, Science and One-on-One. He wanted a label titled 'One-on-one' for tasks that he wants to do with me and he wants one-on-one at

A @trello board to get kids excited - continued

This is a continuation of the previous post titled - A trello board to get kids excited . At the time of writing this post, the previous post had 198 page views. I wish people commented. I did get some positive feedback on Twitter. The Trello twitter account re-tweeted my tweet and also sent out a second tweet advertising the page. Thank you very much. I hope a lot of parents and kids benefited and had fun as a result. Trello people: Idea - How about a 'Trello Kiddo'? Perhaps you could offer that to schools that give iPads for each kid to take home with them. Get them when they are young. When a kid does something religiously, regularly and feels great about it and can't wait to tell everyone about it, you know you've done well as a parent. We realized that we needed a separate column to keep track of 'Special accomplishments'. Positive reinforcement that you can see with your eyes! Some parents feel like they haven't done enough for their kids, partic

Create #VirtualPrivateCloud, NAT Instance and NAT Gateways on @AWSCloud

Create a Virtual Private Cloud, NAT instance and the new NAT Gatweay ... and making it all work. This is a YouTube playlist of three videos.