Top Free & Open-Source Vibration & Condition Monitoring Software

Vibration data is usually the first early-warning signal that something in a machine is going wrong. Bearings start to chatter, misalignment shows up as harmonics, looseness adds random noise, and all of that appears in acceleration and velocity before you see heat, amperage spikes, or catastrophic failure.

Most plants still approach vibration analysis as a specialist activity: a contractor with a handheld analyzer, a quarterly route, a PDF report that lands in someone’s inbox and dies there. At the same time, you now have low cost accelerometers, IIoT gateways, and a big ecosystem of open-source tools that can turn that data into continuous condition monitoring.

Selection criteria

Included tools match at least one of these:

• Can ingest vibration or related telemetry and support condition monitoring or anomaly detection.
• Is open-source, or has a permanently free tier usable in a small production context.
• Runs on standard IT infrastructure (PC, server, container, or browser), not locked to a single proprietary analyzer.

Hardware-only products and closed commercial suites are out of scope.

1. ThingsBoard Community Edition

Best for: Building a full condition monitoring dashboard around vibration and other telemetry.

ThingsBoard CE is an open-source IIoT platform that handles device connectivity, data collection, rule chains, alarms, and dashboards. It natively supports MQTT and can ingest data from vibration and temperature sensors via gateways or Node-RED. There are official examples for connecting industrial vibration sensors and visualizing 3-axis acceleration, RMS values, and FFT time series in dashboards.

For a machine shop, it becomes a central condition monitoring front end: each spindle, motor, or pump is a device; vibration metrics feed dashboards and alarms; maintenance gets alerts when vibration crosses limits or trends upward.

License: Apache 2.0, open source.

2. Grafana + InfluxDB (or other TSDB)

Best for: High quality vibration dashboards driven by time-series databases.

Grafana and InfluxDB are often paired as an open-source stack for time-series monitoring. InfluxDB handles high-rate telemetry writes; Grafana provides flexible dashboards with FFT traces, orbit plots, and trend panels for velocity and acceleration. They are widely used for machine and vehicle telemetry, including IIoT vibration use cases.

For machine shops already capturing spindle load, OEE, or power signals, adding vibration streams into the same stack is straightforward. A small gateway or PLC publishes data, InfluxDB stores it, and Grafana becomes your condition monitoring view.

License: OSS editions of both are open source (MIT / Apache-style).

3. Node-RED Based Monitoring Flows

Best for: Low-code glue between sensors, gateways, and monitoring platforms.

Node-RED is a flow-based programming environment often embedded in IIoT gateways. It is heavily used to decode vibration sensors, preprocess data, and forward it to platforms like ThingsBoard, InfluxDB, or Grafana. Vendor examples show Node-RED flows used to decode tri-axial vibration and temperature telemetry and publish it via MQTT to ThingsBoard or similar platforms.

For a shop engineer, this is a fast way to stand up vibration monitoring without writing a full application: drag a few nodes, apply scaling and filtering, then send the cleaned data into your monitoring backend.

License: Apache 2.0, open source.

4. ViMag - Visual Vibration Analysis Toolbox

Best for: Video based vibration diagnostics on structures and rotating equipment.

ViMag is an open-source visual vibration analysis toolbox that processes standard video recordings to extract vibrational signatures of structures. It implements a video-based methodology to detect small displacements and convert them into frequency and mode information.

In manufacturing, ViMag is useful when you need to understand how a frame, base, or fixture behaves under load without instrumenting it with accelerometers: film the machine during operation, run it through ViMag, and identify modes or hot spots that correlate with vibration problems.

License: Open-source (JOSS published; code on GitHub).

5. PyTTa - Python in Technical Acoustics

Best for: Custom vibration and acoustics analysis pipelines in Python.

PyTTa is an open-source toolbox aimed at audio, acoustics, and vibration data acquisition and analysis. It provides tools for recording, signal processing, spectral analysis, and reporting, designed to reach high-end results with free software.

For a plant with engineering resources, PyTTa is a foundation for custom analytics: you can build scripts that compute envelope spectra for bearings, compare baseline signatures, and generate condition indexes that then feed into Grafana or ThingsBoard.

License: Open source (Python package on GitHub).

6. Vibration Toolbox for Python

Best for: Engineering vibration calculations and teaching.

The Vibration Toolbox is an educational set of Python codes for vibration analysis of mechanical systems. It covers classic engineering tasks like natural frequencies, mode shapes, and response.

In a condition monitoring context, it is not a ready-made monitoring system, but it gives engineers the tools to model rotating systems, estimate critical speeds, and interpret vibration data physically before building alarms.

License: Open source (Python).

7. OpenTorsion

Best for: Torsional vibration analysis in rotating shaft systems.

OpenTorsion is an open-source Python library focused on torsional vibration analysis. It supports creation of shaft line finite element models, calculation of natural frequencies and modes, forced response, and time domain simulation.

For drive trains in compressors, extruders, or long shaft systems, OpenTorsion lets you model torsional behavior and align alarm thresholds with real system dynamics, instead of guessing safe limits.

License: Open source (Python library).

8. VibInspect

Best for: Free desktop vibration analysis in route-based programs.

VibInspect from ReVibe Energy is a free vibration analysis package intended to process data captured with their sensors. It supports common tasks like FFT analysis and report generation.

While it is tied to a specific hardware ecosystem, in many small facilities that is an acceptable trade. You get a no-cost entry into structured vibration analysis and can export data to your own systems later.

License: Freeware (not open source).

9. enDAQ Lab, Cloud, and Python Library

Best for: End to end shock and vibration analysis from portable recorders.

enDAQ supplies sensors plus a free analysis stack. Their content and tools highlight free platforms such as Python and GNU Octave, and they provide a free Lab application, a Cloud tier, and an open-source Python library for working with shock and vibration datasets.

For machine shops running large tests or occasional diagnostics, the combination of free software and scripted Python workflows is attractive. You can build repeatable analysis routines and plug results into condition monitoring dashboards.

License: Mix of proprietary free tools and open-source Python components.

10. Open CbM Development Platforms (iCOMOX, CN0549)

Best for: Building custom vibration-centric condition monitoring hardware plus software.

Analog Devices and partners have released open or reference designs for condition-based monitoring, such as iCOMOX and CN0549. These platforms combine vibration sensing hardware with open-source interfaces and example software that connects to popular data analysis tools like Python and MATLAB, enabling rapid development of custom CbM systems.

In practice, they function as a starter kit for a complete monitoring stack: sample code for data acquisition, open interfaces toward your chosen IIoT platform, and enough flexibility to adapt to your machines.

License: Reference designs and software under open or permissive licenses, hardware sold commercially.

Vibration Analysis Software Comparison

How to assemble a practical stack for a machine shop

If you want a minimal but realistic setup for a CNC or rotating equipment environment:

• Use Node-RED at the edge to read vibration sensors from a spindle, motor, or gearbox and publish cleaned data.
• Store and visualize everything in InfluxDB + Grafana, or push it into ThingsBoard CE if you need device management and a rule engine.
• For deeper engineering analysis or pilot projects, build Python notebooks that use PyTTa, the Vibration Toolbox, or OpenTorsion to experiment with algorithms on recorded data.
• When you need to inspect structures, foundations, or gantries without adding sensors, use ViMag to process high-speed video and compare modes with your expectations.

This combination gives you live dashboards for operators and maintenance, plus analysis tools for engineers, all without license friction.

Conclusion

Vibration and condition monitoring used to mean specialized black-box analyzers and infrequent route reports. With the current open-source ecosystem, you can treat vibration like any other time-series signal on the shop floor: streamed, stored, and analyzed continuously.

The tools above let you start from almost any angle - dashboards first, Python analysis first, or hardware dev kits first - and still converge on the same goal: catching mechanical problems early, with enough context to make decisions, not guesses.

About MDCplus

Our key features are real-time machine monitoring for swift issue resolution, power consumption tracking to promote sustainability, computerized maintenance management to reduce downtime, and vibration diagnostics for predictive maintenance. MDCplus's solutions are tailored for diverse industries, including aerospace, automotive, precision machining, and heavy industry. By delivering actionable insights and fostering seamless integration, we empower manufacturers to boost Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE), reduce operational costs, and achieve sustainable growth along with future planning.