How to Convert Your iPad Into an Information Dashboard

I’m fascinated by those cool looking information displays in movies and TV shows. You know, the ones that are in control rooms and cycle through all the important information. Some of them even show live stats and graphs. How exciting!

But all that just feels like hard work, right? Like you’d need to learn how to program and create all that stuff on your own? Well, not really. All you really need is your iPad, a couple of dollars and some time. If you have a TV, even better! Just mirror the iPad display using an HDMI cable or an Apple TV and you’ve got a real dashboard going.

1. Status Board

Status Board is really easy to use. The app is available for free and you can create one board. Upgrading will let you make unlimited boards as well as unlock 6 extra panels.

The free app gives you access to 6 basic panels. Things like the weather, clock, calendar, RSS, Twitter and Email. If you’re looking to make a personal dashboard that shows your most recent email and latest mentions to your or your company’s Twitter account, the free account will be enough.

The $9.99 upgrade gives you access to pro level panels. You can do same crazy stuff like add custom text and icons, create graphs and write your own little widget.

Another awesome use case for your iPad: You can use your iPad as a teleprompter.

2. Numerics

Numerics ($20) is another dashboard app but as the name suggests, this one’s more about the stats and numbers than anything else. And if you’re a developer or you want to monitor all these stats for your company, it doesn’t get much better than this.

Numerics supports a butt-load (that’s a technical term) of services and features. Everything from Gmail, Github, Twitter, Instagram, Trello, Google Analytics, Google Spreadsheets, Paypal, Mailchimp and more. Features wise you’ve got iPhone and Apple Watch support along with a Today widget. You can set up custom templates, and even share them easily.

And each of those services has multiple widgets for specific use cases. And you can geek out like crazy here. Gmail, for instance, has 74 widgets. Want to create a pie chart of read vs unread email? Sure, why not. Or just display the total number of unread messages if you like.

Verdict

Numerics isn’t as beginner-friendly as Status Board. Of course, it’s not meant to be. Both apps serve different purposes.

Status Board is great for displaying information for newcomers and for monitoring activity at some of the internet services.

Numerics, on the other hand, is great for just showing cold hard numbers on the big screen (for businesses). And such a visual representation can go a long way for helping someone understand what exactly is going on.

What Will You Make?

To me, Status Board with tweets from my lists and RSS entries sounds awesome to have sitting right next to my desktop. What about you? Share with us in the comments below.