Best practices for building a simple web dashboard to monitor Arduino sensor data

Projects Networking, Protocols, and Devices
1

Hello everyone,

I’m working on an Arduino-based project where I collect sensor data (temperature, humidity, and voltage) and want to display it on a simple web dashboard for monitoring and analysis.

I’m currently exploring different approaches such as:

  • Using Arduino with ESP8266/ESP32 to host a basic web server
  • Sending data to a local server or cloud service via HTTP or MQTT
  • Structuring the data efficiently for real-time updates

My main goals are:

  • Reliable data transmission
  • Lightweight and stable setup
  • Easy-to-understand code for long-term maintenance

I’d really appreciate advice on:

  • Recommended libraries or frameworks
  • Common pitfalls to avoid
  • Whether a local dashboard or cloud-based solution works better for small projects

Thanks in advance for your guidance. I’m looking forward to learning from your experience.

2

I use ESP8266 based sensors to send sensor readings like those you mentioned to my home server. The server stores them on an SQL database and they can be viewed on web pages as graphs & tables.

This means that the sensors can be small and battery powered, spending most of their time in deep sleep mode to extend the battery life.

The above is a good way if you want to learn about Arduino, C++, REST APIs, SQL databases, PHP scripts, HTML, SVG etc.

But if not interested in those things, there are other ways using available apps such as Home Assistant

3

This site has good quality tutorials to start with:

4

There are many ways to display measurements on a website, depending on your needs. Maybe this simple solution, which only requires an ESP32, can be one of the options to consider:

5

have a look at esp8266-nodemcu-web-server-sent-events-sse

6

I really have enjoyed using node-red combined with DB, MQTT & HTTP services & a node-red dashboard