[time-nuts] web presentation of data

[Bob Bownes]

If you are looking to graph long running data and provide rolled up
summaries, the combination of MRTG and RRDtool is pretty hard to beat. Can
work with pretty much anything on the back end. And it's the industry
standard for network monitoring.

http://oss.oetiker.ch/mrtg/doc/mrtg.en.html

Or some examples:

http://www.switch.ch/network/operation/statistics/geant2.html



On Tue, Aug 7, 2012 at 10:04 AM, <shalimr9 at gmail.com> wrote:

> Regarding plotting data files through a web page, some time ago I wrote a
> small utility to do just that. We have a corona tester here at my workplace
> that generates binary files with the corona data. These are not easily
> plotted from a standard tool because of the proprietary format.
>
> Instead of writing a Visual something program that would have to be
> installed on all the machines that might need to display the data, I wrote
> a php app that I loaded on the local Linux server.
> I also copied it to my ko4bb.com site at http://www.ko4bb.com/graph
>
> You can try it with this file (which you need to download to your local
> hard drive first, so that you can upload it to the tool :)
>
> http://www.ko4bb.com/graph/**006.DAT <http://www.ko4bb.com/graph/006.DAT>
>
> This software could be easily modified to print any standard file format
> (comma delimited or else) and to adjust the width/height of the picture to
> your liking. Save the picture size in a cookie so that you do not need to
> enter it each time and you are done :)
>
> The source code is there:
>
> http://www.ko4bb.com/graph/**index.php.txt<http://www.ko4bb.com/graph/index.php.txt>
>
> Didier KO4BB
>
>
> On , John Ackermann N8UR <jra at febo.com> wrote:
>
>> I think there are now a couple of threads going on about this topic,
>> which I started by a clumsy attempt to use the "WIDTH" and "HEIGHT"
>> attributes in HTML. :-)
>>
>
>
>
>  For what it's worth, I usually scale web graphics to no larger than 750
>> pixels horizontal or 550 pixels vertical. That goes back to the days of
>> lower resolution monitors, but still works well with the page layout I use
>> at febo.com.
>>
>
>
>
>  The challenge in this case was that using the default settings in John's
>> TimeLab program, I'm getting plots that are about 1350 pixels wide and (as
>> PNGs) are ~130kB in size. When down-sampled, it can become difficult to
>> read the fine data. The best way to handle that, I think, is to create a
>> scaled version of the image and use that as a link to the full-size
>> version. Something like:
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  But that's extra work that I haven't gotten around to automating yet, so
>> I thought I'd try using the HTML size options:
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  The viewer can then right-click on the image and via the "view image" or
>> similar menu open up the full-sized version for the fine detail. That
>> worked on my browser and monitor, but apparently not on some other
>> combinations. So, it's back to the drawing board.
>>
>
>
>
>  Moving to the second thread on plot generation generally, apart from
>> TimeLab I do most of my data capture and analysis in Linux. I typically
>> break the two into separate pieces:
>>
>
>
>
>  1. A single-purpose program (usually written in Perl because I make
>> slightly fewer errors with it than other languages) that talks via GPIB or
>> serial port and outputs a data file with typically MJD and phase or
>> frequency information.
>>
>
>
>
>  2. A graphing tool that reads the data file. For this, I'm quite fond of
>> a program called "Grace" (http://plasma-gate.weizmann.**ac.il/Grace/<http://plasma-gate.weizmann.ac.il/Grace/>)
>> that provides a WYSIWIG graphics interface and saves plot information in an
>> ASCII format that's pretty easy to muck around with. Grace is packaged with
>> Debian-based Linux distributions; I don't know if there's a Windows version
>> available.
>>
>
>
>
>  I've also done some automatic plot generation to go from data file to
>> regularly updated web page. This involves some fairly ugly text processing
>> taking advantage of Grace's batch mode, but the result is a tool that will
>> read the data file, do whatever statistics are desired, combine with the
>> Grace command file, run Grace in batch mode, and create an output PNG file
>> that's uploaded to the web. It's actually fairly easy to do once you figure
>> out the appropriate black magic...
>>
>
>
>
>  John
>>
>
>  ----
>>
>
>
>
>  On 8/6/2012 11:34 AM, Jim Lux wrote:
>>
>
>
>  what would be useful is to have some sort of "plotting engine" that is a
>>
>
>  canned webpage (or stored locally on the user/client computer) that can
>>
>
>  ingest fairly raw data from a URL..
>>
>
>
>
>  something, conceptually, like this:
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  *invocation of plotting engine*
>>
>
>
>
>  data value 1
>>
>
>  data value 2
>>
>
>  data value 3
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>
>  that way, a relatively dumb controller (think arduino-ish) could talk to
>>
>
>  the instrument and build a web page on the fly without having to do much
>>
>
>  formatting. The java/javascript/whathaveyou would do all the plotting
>>
>
>  work on the client side (where, presumably, they have a display and some
>>
>
>  computational horsepower to drive it)
>>
>
>
>
>  A low end microcontroller has no problem serving readonly pages from
>>
>
>  flash/SD, it just has a tough time doing graphics.
>>
>
>
>
>
>
>  And, if you wanted the raw data, you serve up a page called "raw.html"
>>
>
>  or something that just has the raw data.
>>
>
>
>
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