Guides
NoteSpotlight
Be sure to start with MADS structure guide.
If you want to contribute, head on to the contribution guide.
| Date | Title | Author | Description | Categories | Reading Time |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Feb 20, 2026 | Director | MADS v2 provides a new command that makes it easier to launch and control many different agents on the same machine. | v2, director, intermediate, operations | 4 min | |
| Feb 2, 2026 | MADS v2.0 |
MADS v2.0 introduces a set of new features and a breaking change in the plugin protocol. NOTE: this document is a work in progress, while MADS v2 remains in beta. |
v2, changes, plugin, crypto | 7 min | |
| Jan 28, 2026 | Python interface | Version 2 of MADS, among other new features, introduces a C-wrapper in the MADS dynamic library. This allows in turn to implement a fast Python interface to MADS. | python, scripts, interfaces, v2 | 4 min | |
| Dec 30, 2025 | Security in MADS | MADS agents communicate over the network. In production environment, it is suggested to enable authentication and encryption. This guide explains how to do that (starting from MADS v2.0.0). | configuration, advanced, security, encryption | 5 min | |
| Sep 10, 2025 | Real-time visualization with Rerun | Rerun.io is a powerful tool for real-time visualization and debugging of robotics applications. This guide introduces the rerunner plugin, which allows to capture MADS packets and feed them to the rerun viewer to get real-time plots of signals. | easy, visualizaztion, operations, plugin | 7 min | |
| Sep 8, 2025 | Replay plugin |
When debugging a MADS system, it might prove useful to have a way to “replay” a previously recorded data stream. This is what the replay.plugin does.
|
template | 3 min | |
| Sep 3, 2025 | Agents persistency with Datastore |
MADS Version 1.3.5 introduces the Datastore class for plugins. This class allows storing persistent information at device level.
|
plugin, C++, intermediate | 5 min | |
| Aug 30, 2025 | Interacting with MADS | This guide illustrates the various ways to interact with MADS by publishing one-shot JSON messages to the MADS broker. | easy, operations | 6 min | |
| Aug 27, 2025 | Installing MADS | A brief how to for installing MADS on different operating systems. | configuration, setup, how-to, easy | 6 min | |
| Aug 8, 2025 | Monolithic agents | How to develop a custom monolithic agent by exploiting the MADS C++17 library. | advanced, development, c++ | 5 min | |
| Jul 11, 2025 | HDF5 Logger | MADS comes packaged with a logging facility to MongoDB database. For some applications, a file-based logging system is more appropriate. This guide explains how to use the HDF5 logger, which is a file-based sink for MADS using the hierarchical data format. | plugin, sink, hdf5, logging, data | 7 min | |
| Jul 7, 2025 | OTA Plugins | MADS Version 1.3.0 introduces the possibility to load plugins Over-The-Air (OTA): plugin files can be provided to agents by the broker. This allows to centralize the management of plugins and to update them without the need to manually copy compiled plugins to the devices running the agents. | plugin, OTA, over-the-air, intermediate | 7 min | |
| Jul 7, 2025 | Parallel computing with MADS |
MADS has two special agents, dealer and worker, that allow to distribute many different computations to a set of identical workers, in round-robin fashion.
|
plugin, parallel computing, advanced, kubernetes, docker | 7 min | |
| Jun 6, 2025 | Services | Once tested, agents can be turned into linux services, so that they start automatically on boot. | intermediate, OS, setup, easy | 3 min | |
| Jun 6, 2025 | Plugins | MADS supports agents implemented as plugins in C++17. This guide explains how to create a plugin. | advanced, plugin, development, c++ | 9 min | |
| Jun 4, 2025 | Network structure | Illustrate a typical MADS network structure and its requirements. | template, basics, easy | 5 min | |
| Jun 2, 2025 | How to contribute | We explain how to contribute to the MADS guides collection. | how-to, easy | 7 min | |
| Jun 2, 2025 | Containerized MADS | The base agents for setting up a MADS network are available as a containerized environment. | docker, easy, OS, setup | 3 min | |
| Jun 2, 2025 | Raspberry Pi IO |
The rpio.plugin allows low-latency interaction with Raspberry Pi GPIO pins via libgpiod library.
|
intermediate, RaspberryPi, IO, plugin | 5 min | |
| Jun 2, 2025 | Python Agent |
The python_agent repo on GitHub provides a MADS agent with an embedded python3 interpreter for developing MADS sgents in Python
|
python, agent, easy | 4 min | |
| Jun 2, 2025 | ZeroConf (aka Avahi) network discovery | Using hostnames rather than IP addresses is easier and much more robust. In this guide, we learn how to setup a Linux box for advertising its address by using the Avahi protocol/service. | networking, IP, configuration, OS, Linux | 2 min |
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