"I was tired of spending days spinning up custom React or HTML code just to get a simple dashboard for a hardware project."
For most hardware developers, the firmware is the fun part. Getting a clean, functional web interface to monitor telemetry or control components - that part has always been the bottleneck. Arsen Vardanyan built Dashly IoT to eliminate that gap.
Vardanyan, a solo developer working on bootstrapped hardware projects, kept hitting the same wall every time he started a new ESP32 or Arduino build. The options were either custom-coded frontends that took days to put together, or heavyweight enterprise platforms that weren't designed with the maker community in mind. Neither was satisfying. So he built the tool he wished existed.
How It Works
The setup takes less than two minutes. A developer signs up, creates a dashboard, and gets an auto-generated MQTT topic or HTTP API endpoint. A lightweight Arduino library snippet handles the device side - paste the endpoint into the firmware, and the ESP32 or Arduino starts sending data or listening for commands immediately.
From there, the web interface lets developers drag and drop gauges, charts, and control buttons. Everything syncs in real time with the physical device. A temperature sensor reading, a relay switch state, a motor speed - it all shows up on the dashboard as soon as the device sends it.
The platform is built around the specific constraints of the ESP32, ESP8266, and Arduino ecosystem rather than trying to be a generic IoT solution. That specificity matters. These microcontrollers have memory and bandwidth limitations that enterprise platforms rarely account for. Dashly IoT's library is designed to be lightweight enough to run comfortably alongside the rest of a firmware project.
Who It's For
The target user is a hardware developer or maker who wants to ship a project with a real-time dashboard without becoming a frontend engineer in the process. Home automation builders, student projects, prototype testing setups, small-scale commercial deployments - any context where ESP32 or Arduino hardware needs a visual interface without a month of web development effort.
Dashly IoT launched publicly in May 2026. Vardanyan is developing it as a solo founder, and the current release covers the core dashboard and device connection workflow. The drag-and-drop interface supports the most common widget types for hardware telemetry and control out of the box.
Dashly IoT is available at dashlyiot.com.
