As your fleet grows, so does the number of components you manage—sensors, motors, cameras, modules—and all the hardware they rely on. And while building in the real world is incredibly powerful, it’s also notoriously messy: hardware datasheets, driver mismatches, trial and error.
Viam’s mission is to simplify that. We offer a full-stack platform designed to get you from prototype to production faster—on any hardware, in any environment. And now, we’ve made it even easier to find the right components.
Whether you're wiring up a new machine, checking if your existing hardware is supported, or just exploring what Viam works with before making a purchase, you shouldn't have to guess.
Now, you don’t have to.
Search by hardware in the machine builder
When adding a component to your machine config, you can now search by hardware keywords—like “HC-SR04,” “Intel RealSense D435i”, or “Orange Pi Zero 2W”—right from the In the Machine Builder, click the Create button, then select Component, and start searching.
This search capability now matches your query against several fields across all modules:
- API triplet
- Model triplet
- [New] Model short description
- [New] Supported hardware
Here’s what it looks like in action:
As you can see, the Viam-supported ultrasonic sensor module is surfaced right away when searching for “hc”—making it easier than ever to find what you need.
Add supported hardware to your own modules
To power this search, module authors can now specify supported hardware models via the Registry UI. If you maintain a module in your own namespace, you can edit the supported_hardware field for each model on its module page.
Each model within a module can have different supported hardware—so if you support multiple sensor types, you can be specific. Here's what that looks like when you click the edit button on “Supported hardware”:
We’re actively working on populating this field across all Viam-supported modules—and we encourage you to do the same. If you’ve already published modules, now’s a great time to go back and add this metadata. And if you’re building something new, be sure to tag your models with the hardware they support. It’s a small update that makes a big difference for discoverability and usability across the platform.
Who this helps
This feature improves discoverability and reduces friction for several types of users:
- Exploring Viam’s platform: Users looking to identify compatible hardware models or determine what to purchase for their needs.
- Existing hardware owners: Users checking if their current hardware is supported by any modules on Viam’s platform.
- Configuring machines: Users actively building or editing a machine and looking for the right module for their hardware.
By surfacing supported hardware directly in search, we help users like you at every stage—from research and setup to ongoing fleet expansion.
Try it out
Start searching by hardware in the Machine Builder today—it’s a faster, easier way to find the components you need, whether you're just exploring or deep in the build process.
This is just one of many ways we’re making hardware development more intuitive, modular, and scalable. Viam’s platform is built to take the friction out of working with real-world devices—so you can focus on building your unique product, better and faster.
