Blog
The latest news from Google AI
Build your own Machine Learning Visualizations with the new TensorBoard API
Monday, September 11, 2017
Posted by Chi Zeng and Justine Tunney, Software Engineers, Google Brain Team
When
we open-sourced TensorFlow in 2015
, it included
TensorBoard
, a suite of visualizations for inspecting and understanding your TensorFlow models and runs. Tensorboard included a small, predetermined set of visualizations that are generic and applicable to nearly all deep learning applications such as observing how loss changes over time or
exploring clusters in high-dimensional spaces
. However, in the absence of reusable APIs, adding new visualizations to TensorBoard was prohibitively difficult for anyone outside of the TensorFlow team, leaving out a long tail of potentially creative, beautiful and useful visualizations that could be built by the research community.
To allow the creation of new and useful visualizations, we announce the release of a consistent
set of APIs
that allows developers to add custom visualization plugins to TensorBoard. We hope that developers use this API to extend TensorBoard and ensure that it covers a wider variety of use cases.
We have updated the existing dashboards (tabs) in TensorBoard to use the new API, so they serve as examples for plugin creators. For the current listing of plugins included within TensorBoard, you can explore the
tensorboard/plugins directory on GitHub
. For instance, observe the new plugin that generates
precision-recall curves
:
The plugin demonstrates the 3 parts of a standard TensorBoard plugin:
A TensorFlow summary op used to collect data for later visualization. [
GitHub
]
A Python backend that serves custom data. [
GitHub
]
A dashboard within TensorBoard built with TypeScript and polymer. [
GitHub
]
Additionally, like other plugins, the “pr_curves” plugin
provides a demo
that (1) users can look over in order to learn how to use the plugin and (2) the plugin author can use to generate example data during development. To further clarify how plugins work, we’ve also created a barebones
TensorBoard “Greeter” plugin
. This simple plugin collects greetings (simple strings preceded by “Hello, ”) during model runs and displays them. We recommend starting by exploring (or forking) the Greeter plugin as well as other
existing plugins
.
A notable example of how contributors are already using the TensorBoard API is
Beholder,
which was recently created by
Chris Anderson
while working on his master’s degree. Beholder shows a live video feed of data (e.g. gradients and convolution filters) as a model trains. You can watch the demo video
here
.
We look forward to seeing what innovations will come out of the community. If you plan to contribute a plugin to TensorBoard’s repository, you should get in touch with us first through the
issue tracker
with your idea so that we can help out and possibly guide you.
Acknowledgements
Dandelion Mané and William Chargin played crucial roles in building this API.
Labels
accessibility
ACL
ACM
Acoustic Modeling
Adaptive Data Analysis
ads
adsense
adwords
Africa
AI
Algorithms
Android
Android Wear
API
App Engine
App Inventor
April Fools
Art
Audio
Augmented Reality
Australia
Automatic Speech Recognition
Awards
BigQuery
Cantonese
Chemistry
China
Chrome
Cloud Computing
Collaboration
Computational Imaging
Computational Photography
Computer Science
Computer Vision
conference
conferences
Conservation
correlate
Course Builder
crowd-sourcing
CVPR
Data Center
Data Discovery
data science
datasets
Deep Learning
DeepDream
DeepMind
distributed systems
Diversity
Earth Engine
economics
Education
Electronic Commerce and Algorithms
electronics
EMEA
EMNLP
Encryption
entities
Entity Salience
Environment
Europe
Exacycle
Expander
Faculty Institute
Faculty Summit
Flu Trends
Fusion Tables
gamification
Gboard
Gmail
Google Accelerated Science
Google Books
Google Brain
Google Cloud Platform
Google Docs
Google Drive
Google Genomics
Google Maps
Google Photos
Google Play Apps
Google Science Fair
Google Sheets
Google Translate
Google Trips
Google Voice Search
Google+
Government
grants
Graph
Graph Mining
Hardware
HCI
Health
High Dynamic Range Imaging
ICLR
ICML
ICSE
Image Annotation
Image Classification
Image Processing
Inbox
India
Information Retrieval
internationalization
Internet of Things
Interspeech
IPython
Journalism
jsm
jsm2011
K-12
KDD
Keyboard Input
Klingon
Korean
Labs
Linear Optimization
localization
Low-Light Photography
Machine Hearing
Machine Intelligence
Machine Learning
Machine Perception
Machine Translation
Magenta
MapReduce
market algorithms
Market Research
Mixed Reality
ML
MOOC
Moore's Law
Multimodal Learning
NAACL
Natural Language Processing
Natural Language Understanding
Network Management
Networks
Neural Networks
Nexus
Ngram
NIPS
NLP
On-device Learning
open source
operating systems
Optical Character Recognition
optimization
osdi
osdi10
patents
Peer Review
ph.d. fellowship
PhD Fellowship
PhotoScan
Physics
PiLab
Pixel
Policy
Professional Development
Proposals
Public Data Explorer
publication
Publications
Quantum AI
Quantum Computing
renewable energy
Research
Research Awards
resource optimization
Robotics
schema.org
Search
search ads
Security and Privacy
Semantic Models
Semi-supervised Learning
SIGCOMM
SIGMOD
Site Reliability Engineering
Social Networks
Software
Sound Search
Speech
Speech Recognition
statistics
Structured Data
Style Transfer
Supervised Learning
Systems
TensorBoard
TensorFlow
TPU
Translate
trends
TTS
TV
UI
University Relations
UNIX
User Experience
video
Video Analysis
Virtual Reality
Vision Research
Visiting Faculty
Visualization
VLDB
Voice Search
Wiki
wikipedia
WWW
YouTube
Archive
2018
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2017
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2016
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2015
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2014
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2013
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2012
Dec
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2011
Dec
Nov
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2010
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2009
Dec
Nov
Aug
Jul
Jun
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
Jan
2008
Dec
Nov
Oct
Sep
Jul
May
Apr
Mar
Feb
2007
Oct
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Feb
2006
Dec
Nov
Sep
Aug
Jul
Jun
Apr
Mar
Feb
Feed
Google
on
Follow @googleai
Give us feedback in our
Product Forums
.
