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Substrate can connect to any robot, drone, or simulator that exposes data over a Foxglove WebSocket or ROS 2 bridge. Once connected, live topics stream directly into the IDE where you can visualize them in 3D viewers, telemetry plots, and the topic browser.

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Establishing a Connection

1

Verify your robot or simulator is running

Ensure your robot (or simulator) is powered on and publishing data. For ROS 2 systems, a Foxglove WebSocket bridge must be running on the target machine. For Gazebo simulations managed by Substrate, this is handled automatically.Common bridge setups:
# ROS 2 Foxglove Bridge
ros2 launch foxglove_bridge foxglove_bridge_launch.xml

# Verify topics are being published
ros2 topic list
2

Open the connection dialog

Open the Command Palette with Cmd+P (macOS) or Ctrl+P (Windows/Linux) and search for “Connect to Robot”. Select it to open the connection dialog.
3

Enter the WebSocket URL

In the connection dialog, enter the WebSocket URL of your robot or bridge. Common defaults:
SourceURL
Foxglove Bridge (local)ws://localhost:8765
Foxglove Bridge (remote)ws://<robot-ip>:8765
Custom endpointAny valid ws:// or wss:// URL
4

Connect and verify

Click Connect. Once the handshake completes, available topics appear in the Topic Browser panel on the left sidebar. Each topic shows its message type and current publish rate.
5

Add topics to panels

Drag any topic from the Topic Browser into a panel:
  • Drop onto a Plot panel to chart scalar or vector data over time.
  • Drop onto a Viewer3D panel to render 3D markers, point clouds, or TF frames.
  • Drop onto the Log View panel to stream text-based log messages.
Multiple panels can subscribe to the same topic simultaneously.
For live Gazebo simulations launched from Substrate, the connection is automatic. The simulation bridge establishes a gRPC stream to the proxy as soon as the simulation container starts, and topics appear in the Topic Browser without any manual configuration.

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Connection Status

The connection indicator in the status bar shows the current state:
  • Green — Connected and receiving data.
  • Yellow — Connected but no data received in the last 5 seconds.
  • Red — Disconnected or connection failed.
Click the indicator to open the connection dialog and reconnect or change the target URL.
If connecting to a robot on a different network, verify that firewall rules allow WebSocket traffic on the target port. The default Foxglove Bridge port is 8765.