Build on your existing hardware with Viam
"Is my hardware compatible with Viam?" This question echoes across our conversations with customers, and we're excited to share a simple truth: Viam is a universal platform that seamlessly integrates with any hardware, eliminating compatibility barriers and enabling automation across industries. Our mission is to dissolve the traditional barriers between hardware and software engineering, empowering businesses to build, scale, and innovate without being restricted by specific manufacturers or ecosystems.
The Viam platform empowers software developers to orchestrate and gather data from a wide variety of machines and devices from different manufacturers. This flexibility means you can select the optimal hardware for your specific needs while maintaining a unified software approach.
Viam's hardware-agnostic approach offers several key benefits:
- Interoperability: Enables coordination among diverse machines, allowing them to share data and work together seamlessly
- Flexibility: Allows businesses to swap out hardware as their product evolves without changing their software
- Efficiency: Streamlines operations by eliminating the need for custom configurations or juggling multiple systems
- Scalability: Facilitates the development of scalable automation solutions across various industries
Viam already supports a wide range of sensors, actuators, and compute platforms. The platform also provides SDKs, APIs, and cloud-based tools to streamline deployment and management, ensuring that businesses can focus on their application logic rather than low-level hardware configurations that will only distract from their mission.
But sometimes customers just want to know if the hardware they currently have is compatible with Viam. And to that end, we wanted to write a post highlighting that the most popular kinds of components used in different machines work with Viam right out of the box.
Hardware categories supported by Viam
Let's explore how the Viam works with a broad range of component categories:
Cameras
Viam works with many cameras, from USB webcams and IP cameras to depth-sensing cameras. This enables use cases like computer vision, motion detection, and object tracking.
Supported cameras and camera protocols include:
- Intel RealSense family
- OAK family
- SLAMTEC RPLIDAR family
- Android phone cameras
- Real Time Streaming Protocol (RTSP) cameras
- Cameras with a CSI interface (Camera Serial Interface)
Robotic arms
Viam supports several robotic arms, offering standardized motion control with constraints and static obstacle avoidance. This simplifies robotic arm integration across industries, from manufacturing to food automation.
Supported arms include:
- UFACTORY family
- Universal Robots family
- KUKA arms that support the EKI Manager
Environmental and motion sensors
Viam integrates seamlessly with various types of sensors, including environmental, proximity, motion, force, and pressure sensors. This allows for easy connection, configuration, and processing of sensor data, making it ideal for building scalable automation solutions that can put the data your machines generate to use and optimize their performance.
Supported environmental and motion sensor brands include:
- Bosch environmental sensors
- Sensiron SHT3x- DIS temperature and humidity sensors
- Analog Device motor and accelerometer sensors
- TDK InvenSense MPU-6050
- Wit Motion IMUs
It is also worth mentioning that Viam supports sensors built according to the following common protocols:
- LoRaWAN
- GPS and GPS RTK receivers
Boards
Viam supports the pin interface (for general purpose input-output (GPIO), pulse width modulation (PWM), analog signals, and digital interrupts) on a wide variety of boards. Popular boards compatible out of the box with Viam include:
- Raspberry Pi family
- Nvidia Jetson family
- BeagleBoard
- HardKernel ODROID AmLogic
- Numato Lab GPIO peripheral modules
- Orange Pi
- Adafruit PCA9685
- Texas Instruments TDA4VM
- UP
- Revolution Pi
Motors
Viam supports many common motor types, including DC (brushed and brushless) and stepper motors. In addition, Viam supports:
- Dimension Engineering Motor Driver family
- ODrive family
- Texas Instruments ULN2003A
- Applied Motion family
Of course, this post just scratches the surface regarding the types of components that can be managed through Viam. Other compatible components include:
- Grippers
- Encoders
- Gantries
- Controllers
- Custom component types
