Ideal to graphically represents sensor readings.
This article assumes to use Raspbian on a Raspberry Pi, specifically in my case the Raspbian version is the one used with Dexter for GrovePi.
Since GrovePi allows to easily connect sensors to the Raspberry, gnuplot is the perfect companion for that environment.
Installation
Simple, open a terminal and digit : sudo apt-get install gnuplot
That's it :)
Use
Once gnuplot is installed, is possible to open a terminal and digit the command gnuplot.
An interactive environment command line based will be available.
However the best way is to create a file containing the commands needed to generate a graph and have gplot reading that file to produce the graph as described in these instructions.
Here an example of a gnuplot file (called testfile) used to display some information collected in the data file.
Specifically the goal is to create a graph showing the data stored in the second column of the file (light)
The file will be saved in the same directory where this file exists and is executed.
To execute it just digit from the prompt : gnuplot testfile
Here a couple of examples of graphs obtained from the log file.
One shows the light reading and the other the voltage reading.
To obtain the voltage reading was enough to change a couple of lines from the command file.
Specifically I changed the Y axis range (0:1000 for light, 0:5 for Volt) and the plot command telling to use the first and third column in the file rather than the first and the second column (plot '/home/pi/Desktop/fhelper/fhelper_datalogger.txt' using 1:3)
An interactive environment command line based will be available.
However the best way is to create a file containing the commands needed to generate a graph and have gplot reading that file to produce the graph as described in these instructions.
Data file
The file containing the data need to be in a specific format.
The time/date in the format of yyyy-mm-dd:hh-mm-ss (see the timefmt line in the command file), then the light value and (in this example) the voltage measured.
Each field is separated by a tab and each line ending with a newline (/r).
Example of data saved in the fhelper_datalogger.txt
# 2016-12-05:10-52-42 - Starting datalogger - time - light - volt
2016-12-05:10-53-02 758 4.43
2016-12-05:10-53-24 758 4.43
2016-12-05:10-53-44 758 4.43
2016-12-05:10-54-05 758 4.43
..........................
..........................
..........................
Command file
..........................
..........................
..........................
Here an example of a gnuplot file (called testfile) used to display some information collected in the data file.
Specifically the goal is to create a graph showing the data stored in the second column of the file (light)
set title "fHelper light data vs. Time"The file is taking a file called fhelper_datalogger.txt (located in the directory /home/pi/Desktop/fhelper) and will produce a file called displight.png.
set datafile sep '\t'
set xlabel "Time"
set ylabel "Light"
set xdata time
set timefmt '%Y-%m-%d:%H:%M:%S'
set yrange [0:1000]
set style data line
set terminal png size 1500,800 enhanced font "Helvetica,20"
set output 'displight.png'
plot '/home/pi/Desktop/fhelper/fhelper_datalogger.txt' using 1:2
The file will be saved in the same directory where this file exists and is executed.
To execute it just digit from the prompt : gnuplot testfile
Here a couple of examples of graphs obtained from the log file.
One shows the light reading and the other the voltage reading.
To obtain the voltage reading was enough to change a couple of lines from the command file.
Specifically I changed the Y axis range (0:1000 for light, 0:5 for Volt) and the plot command telling to use the first and third column in the file rather than the first and the second column (plot '/home/pi/Desktop/fhelper/fhelper_datalogger.txt' using 1:3)
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