RPi-Monitor: Version 2.10 is available

Note: A new version of RPi-Monitor is available.

For alla details about RPi-Monitor refer to RPi-Monitor Documentation.

The version 2.10 of RPi-Monitor has been ( really ;-) ) released.

If you don't know yet what RPI-Monitor do, have a look to RPi-Monitor Overview.

Photo from flickr by-nc-nd by little-greene-paint-company

What's new in this version?
This version is coming with internal changes, improvement and bug fixes.

Here is the changelog of version 2.10:

• Add addons allowing to create custom page
  - Top3 addon
  - Example addon
  - Shellinabox addon
  - Custom addon
  - Webcam: use hawkeye and custom addon to display webcam
• Support UTF-8 fixing issue #43
• Add BananaPi configuration files (found in BananaPi forum)

Note: A closing parenthesis ' ) ' is missing in the last line of  service.conf .
If you want to use this file as a source of your customisation, remember to add to fix this issue. It is already fixed in github repositories (and future releases).
Installation or upgrade from the repository 

If you already have installed the latest version of RPi-Monitor using the repository, you can execute the following commands to upgrade:


    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get upgrade

If you install RPi-Monitor for the first time, follow to the instruction bellow to install the repository and install RPi-Monitor with the apt-get command.

Activate https transport for apt and add certificate authority: 

    sudo apt-get install apt-transport-https ca-certificates

Install my public key to trust RPi-Monitor repository:

    sudo apt-key adv --recv-keys --keyserver keyserver.ubuntu.com 2C0D3C0F

Execute the following command to add RPi-Monitor into your list of repository: 

    sudo wget http://goo.gl/rsel0F -O /etc/apt/sources.list.d/rpimonitor.list

To install RPi-Monitor, execute the following command: 

    sudo apt-get update
    sudo apt-get install rpimonitor

After installation or upgrade you should excute the following command to update information about upgradable packages:

  sudo /usr/share/rpimonitor/scripts/updatePackagesStatus.pl

Manual installation is still working. Refer to RPi-Monitor Installation page for explaination.


New: Addons and custom pages

RPi-Monitor is now supporting addons. Addons can be custom pages designed to give you the possibility to free your imagination and cutomise RPi-Monitor to your needs.

Addons are html pages, javascript and css directly integrated into RPi-Monitor.
 The activation of an addon is done into RPi-Monitor configuration file. The following line is showing how to activate the default addons explaing addons feature: 

  web.addons.1.name=Addons
  web.addons.1.addons=about

It is possible to use an addon many time into a same configuration file (using different parameters if the addon support them).

The next part of this article will show you some example of addons and is highlighting the possibilities of this new feature.

Top3 Addon 
 
Top3 is showing how to use addons to add additionnal information into status page. This addons is designed to periodically generate HTML content. This content can be accessible from the addons menu (if addon is configured in rpimonotord configuration file) and/or can be inserted into status page using the function InsertHTML().


To activate this addon, add the following line to your configuration file
 
  web.addons.2.name=Top3
  web.addons.2.addons=top3


and configure the cron of your Raspberry Pi to update the HTML content periodically. This can be done with the following lines:

* * * * * root cd /usr/share/rpimonitor/web/addons/top3; ./top3 > top3.html

For deeper details, refer to rpimonitor manpage and to comments available into the script top3.

Example Addon

If you want to develop your own addon, you can refer to the example addons to see how to implement such a feature.
Example addon is providing a HTML page, a javacript and a CSS showing how an addon page can interact with RPi-Monitor.  

Example addon can activate by adding the following lines into the configuration file:

  web.addons.3.name=Addon example
  web.addons.3.addons=example
  web.addons.3.parameter=parameter_example

Shellinabox Addon

Shellinabox is now an addon. It activation should now be activated as an addons
  web.addons.4.name=ShelleInABox
  web.addons.4.addons=shellinabox

The behavior of this addon remain the same as previously embedded feature.

Custom Addon

If you are not confortable with html, javascript and css, the addon custom may help you to customise RPi-Monitor to your wishes. This addons implement an iframe that can display any other web pages.

  web.addons.5.name=Custom addons
  web.addons.5.addons=custom
  web.addons.5.url=/addons/custom/custominfo.html

url is defining the page to be displayed into the iframe. It can be a file reachable from RPi-Monitor internal server or a site available into the Internet.

Webcam

If you want to see the image of your webcam in your brower, you can use hawkeye. Once hawkeye installed, it is very easy to add it into RPi-Monitor interface using the custom addon. The configuration will then be the following:

  web.addons.3.name=Webcam - Hawkeye
  web.addons.3.addons=custom
  web.addons.3.url=http://raspberry_adress:8000/

url parameter point to hawkeye web interface. If you are doing such a configuration, keep in mind about the security of your images. You should use the capacity of hawkeye to restrict the access to the image using a login and a password. You can also have a look to my article showing how to secure the access to RPi-monitor.
 

Customization

RPi-Monitor is fully configurable so if the displayed information doesn't match you need, customize it.
Everything display in status pages or in statistics pages can be modified, tuned and customized to your needs.

To see how to customize it, use the command
    man rpimonitord
and
    man rpimonitord.conf

To define the configuration you can use RPi-Monitor Interactive Configuration Helper whit the command:
    rpimonitord -i

You will find some examples of customization in RPi-Monitor articles.

Usage

Once RPi-Monitor is configured as you wished, browse http://RPiIpAddress:8888/ to access to the web interface.

Note: The graphs rendering may have strange behavior on Google-Chrome on Windows while it works fine on Linux. Internet Explorer is even not able to display statistics, it is then advised to use Firefox on Windows or better... switch to Linux! ;-). 
Note 2: Since RPi-Monitor is now using bootstrap 3, the behavior may have changed. Your comments are welcome.