The adoption of digital manufacturing in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) in the manufacturing sector in the UK is low, yet these technologies offer significant promise to boost productivity. Two major causes of this lack of uptake is the high upfront cost of digital technologies, and the skill gap preventing understanding and implementation. This paper describes a common approach to data capture and visualisation that is cheap and simple. Cheap through the utilisation of low cost and readily available consumer technologies, and simple through the pre-defined flexible approaches that require a minimum of configuration. This approach was implemented on three demonstrators to showcase the flexibility of the approach. These were a tool condition monitoring system, a job and machine status monitor, and a robotic process monitor. The development process resulted in a software architecture where processes were separated and communicated by message queues. We conclude that a service oriented architecture would be the best system for carrying forward the development process. This research was conducted as part of the wider EPSRC Digital Manufacturing on a Shoestring project.