Best native Grafana panel to replace Plotly status chart?

Grafana
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Hi everyone,

I’m working on updating an older Grafana dashboard that currently uses a Plotly panel with custom JavaScript. The panel shows three status states over time: Off, On, and Error. The data comes from two series: one is a position value and the other is a mode/status value. The current Plotly script separates the mode values into three colored traces so the chart shows when each state is active. I’m trying to replace this with a native Grafana visualization if possible, instead of keeping the custom JavaScript. Would the recommended native approach be a Time series panel with transformations and field overrides, a State timeline panel, a Status history panel, or something else? The goal is to keep the same meaning visually: show when the system is Off, On, or Error over time/position, while using native Grafana features as much as possible. Any guidance on the best panel type or setup would be appreciated. Thanks!

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Recommended panel → State timeline

Panel type → State timeline
Query → return the mode/status field
Value mappings → Off, On, Error
Colors → Orange (Off), Green (On), Red (Error)

This renders state changes as continuous colored bands without custom JavaScript or separate traces.

Time series + transformations: Possible, but it recreates what the State timeline panel already does natively with more setup.
Status history: Displays each value change separately instead of merging consecutive identical values, so it won’t produce the same continuous state bands.

Limitation: The State timeline panel always uses time as the x-axis. If your existing Plotly panel actually plots against the position field rather than time, there isn’t a native Grafana panel that reproduces that directly, so you’d need to keep the custom Plotly panel (or another XY-style visualization) for that specific use case.