Voyant Visualizer Preview

🚧 This page describes an early preview release of the Voyant Visualizer. 🚧

Some features may be incomplete or subject to change. Full functionality will be available when Carbon Alpha ships in April 2026.

Questions? Reach out to us at: support@voyantphotonics.com

The Voyant Visualizer is the primary tool for visualizing Voyant point cloud data, replacing Foxglove for most workflows. It supports both live sensor streaming and recorded file playback from a single interface. For ROS users, see the Foxglove Visualization Guide.

Installation

The visualizer is included in the voyant-api package.

Linux:

Download and install the .deb packages from voyant-sdk/releases/latest. See the Installation Guide for full instructions.

Windows:

Download and extract voyant-api-windows-vX.X.X.zip from voyant-sdk/releases/latest. No installation required — see the Windows API Tools guide.

Launch

Linux:

voyant_visualizer

Windows:

Double-click voyant_visualizer.exe (or run from a command prompt).

Data Sources

The Data Source panel at the top of the control panel lets you choose between file playback and live sensor streaming.

Open File (Playback)

Click Open File… and select a .bin recording. Use the Playback Controls panel to play, pause, restart, adjust rate, loop, and scrub through frames using the progress slider.

Open Live Connection

Click Open Connection… to connect to a live sensor. The default settings work for most cases:

Bind Address: 0.0.0.0:4444
Group Address: 224.0.0.0
Interface Address: 127.0.0.1

Meadowlark users: Check the Meadowlark Legacy checkbox before connecting.

For a physical sensor connection, set the Interface Address to your machine’s static IP (e.g. 192.168.20.100). See the Connections Guide for details.

Control Panels

Color Mode

Select from the dropdown or use keyboard shortcuts 1–4:

Range Bands — cyclic HSV colormap repeating over range; adjust band size with the slider
Doppler — Blue-White-Red; blue = closing, red = opening
SNR — signal-to-noise ratio
Reflectance — coarse reflectance estimate
Additional modes: X, Y, Z, Range (min/max)

Rendering

Adjust Point Size (mm) and Point Quality (Square, Low, Medium, High). Lower quality reduces compute load if you experience performance issues. Toggle Mirror Mode with M.

Scene Elements

Toggle coordinate Axes and Range Rings. Range ring spacing presets: Auto, Short Range, Medium Range, Long Range, or Custom.

Camera

Select from preset views or manipulate directly:

Left Mouse: Orbit
Right Mouse: Pan
Scroll: Zoom
C: Reset camera

Details

Frame Info

The Frame Info panel displays metadata for the current frame:

Frame Index — position of the current frame in the stream or file
Timestamp — time of capture
Point Count — number of valid points in the current frame
Point Cloud FPS — incoming frame rate from the sensor or playback

Rendering Statistics

Displays live Display FPS and Draw Time — useful for diagnosing performance issues.

Note: If you are having performance issues, try:

Reduce point quality (square is the lowest quality)

Reduce the number of range rings displayed or remove them entirely

Help (Controls)

Keyboard shortcuts for all controls are listed in the Help (Controls) panel at the bottom of the sidebar.