Deploy a live sensor dashboard with TimescaleDB and Grafana on Google Cloud C4A
Introduction
Get started with TimescaleDB on Google Axion C4A
Create a firewall rule for Grafana/TimescaleDB
Create a Google Axion C4A Arm virtual machine on GCP
Set up TimescaleDB on Arm64
Ingest real-time sensor data on Arm64
Install Grafana and configure the TimescaleDB data source
Build a live sensor temperature dashboard
Next Steps

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Create a live sensor temperature dashboard

In this section, you’ll create a Grafana dashboard that visualizes live temperature data stored in TimescaleDB. The dashboard continuously updates to display sensor temperature changes in near real time.

Prerequisites

Before proceeding, ensure the following are already completed:

  • TimescaleDB is installed and running
  • Grafana is installed and accessible
  • PostgreSQL (TimescaleDB) data source is configured in Grafana
  • Live data ingestion into the sensor_data table is running

You can verify live ingestion with:

    

        
        
sudo -u postgres psql sensors -c "SELECT COUNT(*) FROM sensor_data;"

The count should increase over time.

Access Grafana

Open Grafana in your browser:

    

        
        
http://<GRAFANA_PUBLIC_IP>:3000

Log in using your Grafana credentials.

Create a New Dashboard

  • From the left sidebar, select Dashboards
  • Select New dashboard
  • Select New visualization

You will be redirected to the Edit panel screen.

Configure the Live Sensor Query

In the Query section:

  • Data source: PostgreSQL / TimescaleDB
  • Query type: SQL
  • Format: Time series

Image Alt Text:Grafana time series panel editor showing the visualization configuration screen with the time series panel type selected and panel title field alt-txtGrafana visualization configuration

Paste the following query after selecting Code on the right of the query editor:

    

        
        
SELECT
  time AS "time",
  temperature
FROM sensor_data
WHERE $__timeFilter(time)
ORDER BY time;

Image Alt Text:Grafana SQL query editor showing TimescaleDB query with time filterTimescaleDB SQL query editor

This query retrieves live sensor temperature data within the selected time range.

Apply the following settings in the right-hand panel:

  • Visualization Settings

    • Visualization: Time series
    • Panel title: Live Sensor Temperature
    • Table view: Disabled

  • Time & Refresh Settings

    • Time range: Last 5 minutes
    • Refresh interval: 5s

These settings ensure the panel refreshes automatically with new data.

Validate the Live Sensor Panel

Once configured, the panel should display a continuously updating temperature graph.

Image Alt Text:Grafana live sensor temperature time series panel showing a continuous line graph of temperature readings from multiple sensors over the last 5 minutes alt-txtLive sensor temperature panel

Save the dashboard

  • Select Save dashboard (top-right corner)
  • Enter a name, for example: Live Sensor Monitoring Dashboard
  • Select Save

The dashboard is now active.

What you’ve accomplished

You’ve built a complete time-series monitoring pipeline on Google Cloud C4A Axion Arm-based processors. TimescaleDB is running natively on Arm64, ingesting live sensor data through Python, and serving queries to Grafana for real-time visualization. From here you can add more sensors, create additional dashboards, set up alerting rules in Grafana, or tune TimescaleDB for your specific workload.

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