Simple gauge

Who it’s for

Dashboard builders filling a small tile with a ranged reading — a 2×2 square in a grid of many, where a full gauge with captions and ticks would not fit but a bare proportion still needs to be visible.

What it does

The Simple gauge draws a reading as a filled ring between a minimum and a maximum, with the value in the middle and both end points marked. At the default 0–100 range, a reading of 62 fills just under two thirds of the ring on a light track, in a tile small enough to repeat a dozen times across a dashboard.

• Built for a small tile — the donut shape uses the square efficiently, which an arc with its flat bottom does not.
• Position within a range at a glance, with the value readable in the center.
• The ring color can follow the value through a set of levels, so a tile that is close to its limit stands out in a grid without being read.
• Minimum and maximum stay printed even at this size, which keeps the scale honest.
• Units are converted, not just appended — the gauge respects the unit set on the key and converts to the unit chosen on the widget.
• The Simple gauge shows one current reading and deliberately little else: captions, ticks and timestamps are available but usually crowd a tile this size.

How to set up

Data keys

The Simple gauge takes one datasource, one entity and one data key.

Key	Role	Type	Description
Any numeric key	The value the ring fills to	Timeseries	Numeric only. An attribute works equally well. The key’s own units and decimals override the widget-level ones.

Range

Setting	Default	Effect
Min value	0	The ring’s empty end
Max value	100	The ring’s full end; must be greater than the minimum
Min and max label	On	Prints both end points
Angle to start from	90	Where the ring begins, in degrees

How to customize

• To change the gauge’s shape — set Type to Arc, Donut, Horizontal bar or Vertical bar.
• To make the fill change color as the value rises — set the Bar color levels.
• To rotate the ring’s opening — set Angle to start from, so the gap sits where it suits the tile.
• To recover space in a small tile — turn off Min and max label once the range is obvious from context.
• To make the ring heavier or lighter — adjust Relative bar width, and turn on Rounded line cap for a softer end.
• To change the empty track — set Gauge bar background to suit a light or dark dashboard.
• To add a caption — turn on Units title or Label, keeping the text short at this size.

Tips

• Give every tile in a grid of these the same range and the same color levels. Small gauges are compared by fill angle, and a grid where each tile has its own scale invites exactly the comparison it cannot support.
• Turn the min and max labels off only when every tile shares one well-known range, such as a percentage. Otherwise the labels are the only thing standing between a reader and a confident misreading.