Thinkwatt: record power consumption and visualize it with gnuplot

Question

https://github.com/mikar/thinkwatt wrote:
Thinkwatt is a bash script for use with thinkpad laptops. However, as of v0.2, it works with all kinds of laptops as long as they've got a battery attached.
Thinkwatt can
* record your power consumption,
* calculate an average of that consumption
* and visualize that data in a 2D gnuplot graphic.
options:   
    -r, --record    record power consumption and optionally create a graph from the gathered data
    -p, --plot    create a plot image from a specified data file
    -a, --average    calculate the average power consumption from a specified data file
    -q, --quiet    makes thinkwatt less chatty
    -o, --output    the output file. can be prepended by a path.
    -h, --help    show this help text
examples:
    thinkwatt -r (will record to a temp file until cancelled)
    thinkwatt -r 300 -o /foo/bar/consumption.dat (will record for 5 minutes to the specified file)
    thinkwatt -p /foo/bar/consumption.dat (will create a graph from the specified file)
Thinkwatt works with all laptops, not just Thinkpads.
If you're running thinkwatt on a Thinkpad it is still recommended to use tp_smapi as it provides more accurate results than the generic acpi.
This is an example of what the graph can look like:
It's mainly useful for retracing power consumption during certain situations (e.g. measuring the influence of certain hardware or software (kernel comes to mind), or simply reliably gather typical power consumption for certain activity profiles like surfing, working, watching movies etc.)
I guess I'll add to the script when and if time and my bash skills allow it. Suggestions for improvement are always welcome.
You can get thinkwatt from my git repository here or the AUR here.
Regards,
demian
Last edited by demian (2011-05-28 21:10:30)

Answer 1

akurei@joel: ~ $ LANG=C thinkwatt -r 60 /home/akurei/test
recording power consumption for the next 60 seconds
/usr/bin/thinkwatt: line 100: /tmp/thinkwatt/28606.dat: No such file or directory
mv: cannot stat `/tmp/thinkwatt/28606.dat': No such file or directory
error: file not found.
average consumption during the last 60 seconds was W
do you want to create a graphic now, too? y/n y
error: file not found.
akurei@joel: ~ $ LANG=C thinkwatt -r 60
recording power consumption for the next 60 seconds
/usr/bin/thinkwatt: line 100: /tmp/thinkwatt/29019.dat: No such file or directory
error: file not found.
average consumption during the last 60 seconds was W
do you want to create a graphic now, too? y/n y
error: file not found.
akurei@joel: ~ $ yaourt -Qi gnuplot
Name : gnuplot
Version : 4.4.3-1
URL : http://www.gnuplot.info
Licenses : custom
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : readline gd wxgtk cairo libjpeg lua
Optional Deps : None
Required By : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 3016.00 K
Packager : Ronald van Haren <[email protected]>
Architecture : x86_64
Build Date : Fri May 6 10:55:29 2011
Install Date : Mon May 16 17:04:26 2011
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Description : Plotting package which outputs to X11, PostScript, PNG, GIF, and others
akurei@joel: ~ $ yaourt -Qi tp_smapi
Name : tp_smapi
Version : 0.40-5
URL : http://tpctl.sourceforge.net/
Licenses : GPL
Groups : None
Provides : None
Depends On : mkinitcpio>=0.6.8 module-init-tools>=3.12-2
Optional Deps : None
Required By : None
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 220.00 K
Packager : Michael Duell <[email protected]>
Architecture : x86_64
Build Date : Mon May 16 17:03:41 2011
Install Date : Mon May 16 17:03:50 2011
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Description : Modules for ThinkPad's SMAPI functionality
akurei@joel: ~ $ yaourt -Qi gawk
Name : gawk
Version : 3.1.8-2
URL : http://www.gnu.org/directory/GNU/gawk.html
Licenses : GPL
Groups : base
Provides : awk
Depends On : sh glibc
Optional Deps : None
Required By : autoconf syslog-ng sysvinit thinkwatt
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 2224.00 K
Packager : St
Architecture : x86_64
Build Date : Sat Nov 20 04:00:45 2010
Install Date : Thu May 5 19:05:55 2011
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Description : Gnu version of awk
akurei@joel: ~ $ yaourt -Qi sed
Name : sed
Version : 4.2.1-3
URL : http://www.gnu.org/software/sed
Licenses : GPL3
Groups : base
Provides : None
Depends On : acl sh
Optional Deps : None
Required By : ca-certificates fakeroot grub mkinitcpio packer thinkwatt
Conflicts With : None
Replaces : None
Installed Size : 804.00 K
Packager : St
Architecture : x86_64
Build Date : Fri Nov 19 22:35:32 2010
Install Date : Thu May 5 19:05:55 2011
Install Reason : Explicitly installed
Install Script : Yes
Description : GNU stream editor
akurei@joel: ~ $ lsmod|grep tp_smapi
tp_smapi 20043 0
thinkpad_ec 4085 2 hdaps,tp_smapi
Last edited by akurei (2011-05-16 15:36:40)