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Quick Start Tutorial

This quick tutorial walks you through running your first MSight nodes on a single machine.
It works on Windows, Linux, or macOS. You can see the tutorial folder with all resource in it.

🧰 Step 1. Install MSight Locally

Follow the Pip Installation guide to install MSight on your machine.

🧱 Step 2. Set Up a Redis Server

MSight uses Redis Pub/Sub for communication and configuration.
You need to have a Redis server running locally or accessible in your network.

Option A — Install Redis Natively

You can install Redis directly on your system by following the official guide:
👉 https://redis.io/docs/latest/operate/oss_and_stack/install/install-redis/

After installation, start the Redis server: 

redis-server

Option B — Run Redis via Docker

If you have Docker installed, you can start a Redis container easily:

docker run -d   --name redis-server   -p 6379:6379   redis:latest

⚙️ Step 3. Set Environment Variable

Set the environment variable MSIGHT_EDGE_DEVICE_NAME to identify your device.
For this tutorial, we’ll use testing.

On Linux/macOS:

export MSIGHT_EDGE_DEVICE_NAME=testing

On Windows (PowerShell):

set MSIGHT_EDGE_DEVICE_NAME=testing

💡 In deployment, replace testing with the actual device name (e.g., intersection_mcity_north).

✅ Step 4. Check MSight Status

Verify that your environment and Redis connection are working:

msight_status

If everything is set up correctly, you should see a table like this:

--------------------------NODES--------------------------
+-------------+-----------------+-------------------+--------+------------------+----------+
| Node Name   | Publish Topic   | Subscribe Topic   | Type   | Last Heartbeat   | Status   |
+=============+=================+===================+========+==================+==========+
+-------------+-----------------+-------------------+--------+------------------+----------+

If you see this table (even empty), 🎉 you’re ready to launch nodes!

🧩 Step 5. Launch Two Simple Nodes

In this example, we’ll create two nodes:

  1. A source node that reads an image and publishes it.
  2. A viewer node that subscribes to the same topic and displays the image.

(Illustration: two nodes connected through Redis Pub/Sub)
Image Node Example

🖼️ Prepare the Folder

  1. Create a new folder anywhere on your system.
  2. Place your favorite .jpg image inside it (e.g., myphoto.jpg).

🚀 Launch the Source Node

Navigate to that folder in your console, start the local image source node:

msight_launch_local_image   -n test_local   -pt local   --sensor-name local_image   -p myphoto.jpg

Explanation:

  • -n : node name (test_local) — must be unique across the system
  • -pt : publishing topic name (local) — subscribers must use the same topic to receive messages
  • --sensor-name : identifies which sensor this data came from
  • -p : path to the image file

If successful, you’ll see something like: 

Starting the dummy local image source node test_local.

👀 Launch the Viewer Node

Open a new terminal window and start the viewer node:

msight_launch_image_viewer -n image_viewer -st local

Since both nodes share the same topic (local), the viewer will receive and display the image.

If everything works, a window will open showing your image 🎉
You’ve just built a simple data pipeline — one node publishes, the other subscribes and visualizes.

🖼️ Check Current Status

You can check the status of your nodes at any time using:

msight_status

You should see something like this: 

--------------------------NODES--------------------------
+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------+----------+
| Node Name    | Publish Topic   | Subscribe Topic   | Type                 | Last Heartbeat      | Status   |
+==============+=================+===================+======================+=====================+==========+
| image_viewer |                 | local             | ImageViewerSinkNode  | 2025-12-13 21:36:03 | RUNNING  |
+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------+----------+
| test_local   | local           |                   | LocalImageSourceNode | 2025-12-13 21:36:03 | RUNNING  |
+--------------+-----------------+-------------------+----------------------+---------------------+----------+
--------------------------TOPICS--------------------------
+--------------+----------------------------------+---------------+
| Topic Name   | Data Type                        | Description   |
+==============+==================================+===============+
| local        | msight_core.data.image.ImageData |               |
+--------------+----------------------------------+---------------+
Which shows both nodes are running and communicating! 🎉

💡 What You Learned

You now understand: - How MSight nodes communicate through Pub/Sub topics
- How to set up and verify your environment
- How to launch a simple source → sink data flow

This is the foundation for building complex MSight pipelines.

📚 Continue Exploring

Try these extended tutorials next: