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TUI Dashboard

The ADOS Drone Agent includes a terminal user interface (TUI) built with Textual. It gives you a visual dashboard directly in your terminal, works over SSH, and does not require a browser or GUI. Launch it with: 
ados tui
ADOS TUI dashboard with service status, telemetry gauges, and system health

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Screens

The TUI has nine screens. Switch between them using the keyboard shortcuts shown in the footer bar.
KeyScreenWhat it shows
dDashboardAgent version, uptime, board info, FC status, service health summary
tTelemetryLive attitude (roll/pitch/yaw), GPS position, altitude, speed, battery
mMAVLinkFC connection details, serial port, baud rate, MAVLink message rates
vVideoCamera list, encoder state, MediaMTX status, recording toggle
wLinkWFB-ng signal strength, SNR, FEC stats, packet loss, bitrate
sScriptingRunning scripts, script output, text command input
uUpdatesOTA status, current version, available updates, upgrade trigger
cConfigLive config editor, dot-path key/value pairs, save to disk
lLogsScrollable log viewer with auto-tail
Press q to quit.

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Dashboard screen

The default screen when you launch the TUI. Shows a summary of everything at a glance: agent version, uptime, detected board and tier, flight controller connection status, and a service health grid.
TUI dashboard screen showing board, FC, and service status

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Telemetry screen

Live flight data pulled from the agent’s REST API. Updates every second. Shows:
  • Attitude: roll, pitch, yaw in degrees
  • Position: latitude, longitude, altitude (MSL and AGL)
  • Speed: ground speed and airspeed
  • Battery: voltage, current, remaining percentage
  • GPS: fix type, satellite count, HDOP
Details about the flight controller connection:
  • Connection state (connected/disconnected/searching)
  • Serial port path and baud rate
  • MAVLink system/component IDs
  • Message receive rate (msgs/sec)
  • Last heartbeat timestamp

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Video screen

Camera and encoding pipeline status:
  • Detected cameras (CSI and USB) with names and types
  • Encoder state (idle, encoding, error)
  • MediaMTX process status (running/stopped)
  • RTSP stream URL
  • Recording state and file path
WFB-ng radio link telemetry (only active when WFB-ng is running):
  • RSSI in dBm
  • Signal-to-noise ratio in dB
  • Channel number
  • TX power
  • Packets received and lost
  • FEC recovered and failed counts
  • Current bitrate in kbps

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Scripting screen

Manage scripts from the terminal:
  • List of running scripts with state (running, paused, stopped)
  • Script output log
  • Text command input bar for sending Tello-style commands

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Updates screen

OTA update management:
  • Current installed version
  • Update channel (stable, beta, dev)
  • Last check timestamp
  • Available update details and changelog preview
  • Trigger check and upgrade from within the TUI

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Config screen

A live configuration editor:
  • Browse all config sections (agent, mavlink, video, network, server, etc.)
  • View current values
  • Edit values using dot-path keys
  • Save changes to /etc/ados/config.yaml
Config changes made in the TUI take effect on the next service restart. Some settings (like mavlink.baud_rate) require a restart of the specific service.

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Logs screen

Scrollable log viewer that reads from the agent’s log output:
  • Auto-scrolls to follow new entries
  • Scroll up to pause auto-scroll
  • Color-coded log levels (info, warning, error)

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Using over SSH

The TUI works well over SSH. Make sure your terminal supports 256 colors and is at least 80 columns wide. 
ssh user@your-drone.local -t "ados tui"
The -t flag allocates a PTY, which is required for the Textual interface to render correctly.
For the best experience, use a modern terminal emulator (Ghostty, iTerm2, Kitty, WezTerm) with a monospace font. The TUI uses Unicode box-drawing characters and color codes that render best in terminals with good Unicode support.

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API connection

The TUI connects to the agent’s REST API at http://localhost:8080 by default. If the agent is running on a different port, configure it in /etc/ados/config.yaml under scripting.rest_api.port. The TUI uses the AgentFetcher class to poll the API periodically. It reads the API key from /etc/ados/pairing.json for authenticated endpoints, same as the CLI.

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Requirements

The TUI requires the textual Python package. It is included as a dependency of the agent and installed automatically by the install script. If you see an import error when running ados tui, install it manually: 
pip install textual
The TUI is available on all platforms (Linux, macOS) but is most useful on the companion computer itself or over SSH to the drone.