Jon00 Virtual device graphing utility

[drozwood90]

Help with Perfmon...

Jon,

I can't really access your website (I think port 8087 is being blocked).

So, I'll ask the question here...

The backround:
I have been using your perfmon script...well since it came out.

Recently I was able to get a few of the last components that makes up my HTPC environment.

I have a 1.5TB serial ATA drive plugged into my HS server. I have my movies loaded on there (no, it's not full...I wish I had THAT many movies! Can you blame me for getting that drive...? $120 for 1.5TB from Newegg! No rebates!). I also have a 1TB RAID 5 array (true raid 5 with a hardware controller...Promise SX6000). 2.13GHz Intel Celeron, 2GB ram, Intel server grade gigabit NIC (it offloads the network processing so my system doesn't have to do anything but pipe data to it).

I serve a list of movies from HS, using the XML data from DVD Profiler (using a heavily modified version of the DVD Collection webpages that are on this board). You use the touchscreen (which is run from a VGA splitter from the HTPC) to surf the movies, choose one, then HS sends Telnet commands to ZoomPlayer Pro (my trial is up soon!!) to play the movie...streaming from the server.

When HS loads, it runs a program (from startup.txt) that puts IT and hs_compat into the next level UP from normal for priority. This made 90% of all my timing issues go away with HS. Even if I am streaming movies (after I did what I did in the last section of this), or I have even converted some DV from my camcorder to mpg format for burning to a DVD+R, HS responds as if it was the ONLY thing running .

The Problem:
Whenever I played movies, about every 5,10, or 15 minutes the movies would pause. Very distracting. More often then not it was every 5 minutes.

So, I thought, it had to do with the network bandwidth. So, I upgraded my HTPC to gigabit. As the rest of the house was already wired...it didn't matter to the server. Problem persisted. OK, then maybe it was the hard drive.

Moved a few movies over the RAID parition...repeat of above.

I unplugged the SATA drive...which put the server back to it's original configuration. Movie played fine.

So, I had the Serial ATA drive plugged into my server, and the movies would act strange. EVEN if I was NOT using the drive. Just as long as it was plugged in.

The situation:
So, I started to turn on more verbose loggining in all my scripts. I went to the log screen with my PPC. When the movie went and paused, I refreshed the webpage. I discovered that perfmon was running every 5 minutes. Which corresponded to EACH time the movie would go crazy.

I also proved this by turning OFF PERFMON from running. Now it appears that I have no more issues, so long as I am not running perfmon.

The Question:
Do you have any idea WHY this would cause this kind of an effect? I was going to look at the code, but discovered that it was a VBEN file, so I do need your help with this.

If it's not something you are willing to look at (I see you have MANY new scripts out and realize that your time is short), I'm ok with that. It was neat to see what was going on with the server, but I'd rather watch movies then see if the server has had a bad processing day or not!

I appreciated the script for as long as I have run it...it was really neat to see the trends and how the system responded under the load of various scripts for various rooms (depending on the number of sensors in a room, as well as the proximity of them, I might have 6-10 triggers for HS in a matter of 10-20 seconds).

Thanks again!

--Dan

[jon00]

If the script was processor intensive you would see it in performance monitor so it is not that. I suspect that the issue is due to the scripts performance counter calls that may be also being used by your software to monitor it's performance and making sure it is not maxing out the PC. There is nothing I can do to assist.

I would disable all the performance checks in the ini and then add them one by one until you find the culprit(s).

[drozwood90]

If the script was processor intensive you would see it in performance monitor so it is not that. I suspect that the issue is due to the scripts performance counter calls that may be also being used by your software to monitor it's performance and making sure it is not maxing out the PC. There is nothing I can do to assist.

I would disable all the performance checks in the ini and then add them one by one until you find the culprit(s).

You've been a great help! I didn't even think to look at the .ini!

Wow...oh well, now I'll see which one is causing the issue! Thanks!

--Dan

[jon00]

Just so that others are not confused, this issue has nothing to do with the VD graphing utility rather my performance monitoring script!

[yeahprolly]

Hi Jon,

Nice tool! I've gone through the docs and a few of the board threads but I still have a few questions on functionality:

1) Can the data be archived (e.g. stored in a file) and perhaps matched with a timestamp? If this could be done in CSV format, one could easily use excel to create graphs from any timeframe, plot multiple lines/devices on the same graph, and manipulate the data in virtually endless ways.

2) I'm trying to think of a way to have an email sent to me whenever the temperature is changed on my thermostat. I have Homeseer query the thermostat once per minute, but I'd like to trigger an action (script) on a temperature change event. Not sure if using your graphing tool is or may be an optimal way of doing this, but I'm eager to know your thoughts.

Thanks for all your contributions!

[jon00]

I was wondering when storing data would be raised!

The script is a graphing tool only. I purposely avoided this as it's really easy to log data as a CSV as a script and that people have widely different views as how to store data (flat file, SQL, Access etc).

As for email, why not just create an event that triggers on device value change for your thermostat device?

BTW, did you try the latest release of Checkpop with the ability to send a variable for script action?

[yeahprolly]

Good ideas Jon. I'll think about them and get back to you.

BTW, no I didn't realize the new Checkpop was available with that functionality. I'll take a look at it later on.

Thanks!

[otaku]

I am trying to plot the thermostat value, but it seems to read it as 0. The UI shows the correct information. If I am using the thermostat plug-in, can I not use $DV:Q4 or similar notation to get the current temperature on the thermostat? Since a tstat can have multiple values (set points, mode, etc.), how do you specify which value it is getting?

I have another virtual device that is graphing just fine.

Thanks.

[jon00]

I can't really help you with the thermostat plugin as I have never used it. If the plugin does not set the device value for Q4 then you need to obtain the data another way. Even though the UI may display the correct value, you cannot just use this (by getting the device string) as this will be embedded with HTML code.

Perhaps others who use this plugin may be able to assist.

[Pierre]

Great job, that is a fantastic an easy to use script, I just cannot believe how you made it ....

May I make a suggestion : I would like the "low" and "high" to be customized for other languages, or even changed to Max and Min for a better international understanding.
I am also looking forward for using it on databases since I log about everything...
Congratulations again Jon for your great programming skills, also for giving it for free, where other will try to sell a plugin.

[jon00]

Thanks very much Pierre.

Happy to add language support...in fact I have already done so! You can now download V1.03 with this addition!

[Pierre]

Thanks a lot Jon for the update, I wish all plugin author, and also HSteam, could be as fast for adding multi-language support.

May I suggest a warning for the user to first backup the ini file before extracting the new version's file ?

[Pierre]

International setttings

My regional settings are , among others, to use komas as decimal separators, and not dots.
This is what I figured:
I have to use komas in :

parameters=sensorid &"," & 23,86 'yes it is a koma
hs.runex "jon00vdGraphing.vben","Main",Parameters

otherwise I will have an error:
18/02/2009 21:48:51 - Jon00_VDGraphin - Error: Numeric data for graphing not specified in either optional parameters or Jon00VDGraphing.ini under [Graph1] Data= parameter - script terminated

This would be fine, as I have to do the same way to save values in HS devices.
BUT: I see that all my decimal values are truncated, not rounded, on my graphs.
23,86 will be graphed as 23 no decimals.

Everything else is amazing, this script rocks !

[otaku]

When you pass the value, my guess is it has to be formatted with a decimal since that is standard VBS. When displayed, if you used the FormatNumber() function in theory that should format according to your local computer settings.

So in the code you have to use a decimal, but it should be possible to display with a comma.

The reason it is rounding is it sees everything after the comma as identifying another device to be updated, which gives you your error.

[jon00]

My regional settings are , among others, to use komas as decimal separators, and not dots.
This is what I figured:
I have to use komas in :

parameters=sensorid &"," & 23,86 'yes it is a koma
hs.runex "jon00vdGraphing.vben","Main",Parameters

otherwise I will have an error:
18/02/2009 21:48:51 - Jon00_VDGraphin - Error: Numeric data for graphing not specified in either optional parameters or Jon00VDGraphing.ini under [Graph1] Data= parameter - script terminated

This would be fine, as I have to do the same way to save values in HS devices.
BUT: I see that all my decimal values are truncated, not rounded, on my graphs.
23,86 will be graphed as 23 no decimals.

Everything else is amazing, this script rocks !

The reason for the truncation is that I use a comma as the delimiter internally to split between the graph number and the data. It sees the comma as another delimiter hence only seeing 23.

Is it possible to multiply the number by 100 and then set the dividevalue in the ini file to 100?