Data Black Box

A live subscription shows what a robot says now. To ask about the past (“what was the battery voltage when it stopped?”), the messages must be recorded somewhere. The WiseVision Data Black Box (open source, MPL-2.0) records chosen ROS 2 topics to InfluxDB through a Zenoh server, and answers queries through the ROS 2 service /get_messages.

ROS2 MCP talks to it with one tool, ros2_get_messages_stored_in_influx_data_base.

How it works

1. The Data Black Box node (ros2 run wisevision_data_black_box black_box) runs next to InfluxDB and a Zenoh server, and stores the topics you point it at.
2. The agent calls ros2_get_messages_stored_in_influx_data_base with a topic, its message type and an optional time window.
3. ROS2 MCP calls /get_messages (type lora_msgs/srv/GetMessages) and returns the stored messages with their timestamps.

The tool calls only /get_messages, which reads. It stays available in read-only mode.

Arguments

Argument	Required	Meaning
topic_name	yes	The recorded topic.
message_type	yes	Full message type used to decode it, for example sensor_msgs/msg/BatteryState.
number_of_messages	no	How many messages to return (default 0).
time_start	no	ISO 8601 timestamp: only messages after it.
time_end	no	ISO 8601 timestamp: only messages before it.

The full schema is in the tool reference.

Set it up

The Data Black Box is a separate ROS 2 package. Build and run it with the guides in its repository:

• Build and run: colcon build, the config.json with your Zenoh REST URL, and DB_ADDRESS / DB_PORT for InfluxDB.
• Minimal example: create the InfluxDB storage, choose the topics to record, and query them.

The ROS2 MCP Docker image already contains the message types the tool needs. The server and the Data Black Box must be on the same ROS domain.

If /get_messages is not running, the tool returns Service '/get_messages' not available (timeout).

In WiseOS

WiseOS (early access) sets the Data Black Box, InfluxDB and a dashboard up for a whole fleet in one deployment.