Conky Masters - Ideas for cpubar colorization?

[oshunluvr]

I just starting using conky again a few months ago. I display my external IP address so I could tell at a glance when I was using a VPN vs. not, my up/down load speeds, memory and swap % in use, and today I found a desire to see CPU loads.

Trying to have some fun with it, I decided to try and have a eye-catching way to see when my CPUs got busy. I didn't like the size and look of the cpugraph but I liked the bar. Here's a look at what I settled on:


As you can see: small and simple. But I wanted a bit more flash when the CPUs get busy so I changed the bar lines in the text section to this:

CPU 1:$color ${cpu cpu1} ${if_match ${cpu cpu1}<50}${color dimgrey}${else}${if_match ${cpu cpu1}<70}${color0}${else}${if_match ${cpu cpu1}<89}${color1}${else}${color2}${endif}${endif} ${endif}${goto 0}${offset 80}${cpubar cpu1 3,164}${color dimgrey}

This changes the color of the CPU bar from dimgrey, to green, to gold, to red as the percentage of use climbs. Pretty cool.

I wonder if there's a way to have the bar change color in a gradient fashion, or step through the colors - like dimgrey for 40% of the bar, then the next 20% green, next %20 percent gold, etc.

Anyone have ideas?

[Snowhog]

Just because I can (not that I should), but your background texture rather sucks (IMO). Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so......

[GreyGeek]

I had a hard time reading the labels.
Only an ATC could read those...

[oshunluvr]

Just because I can (not that I should), but your background texture rather sucks (IMO). Of course, beauty is in the eye of the beholder, so......

LOL, the background is an extreme closeup of a women's face wearing white makeup. Just near the edge of the conky location, her finger with a red nail, is pulling her skin forward. So you're seeing the makeup, the skin stretching, and the extreme closeup of the skin. It's so hi-res you can see the small hairs we all have all over our bodies but seldom notice. At the size and resolution of my monitor (37.5" wide at 3840x1600, aka Ultra-Wide 4K), it's actually quite interesting to look at. I change wallpaper every couple of months anyway.

I had a hard time reading the labels.
Only an ATC could read those...

Yeah, the dimgrey fades into the edge of the wallpaper and they wash out. But since I know what's there, I can see them well enough. I toyed with making them brighter, but they got to be too noticeable.

My idea of the conky was to ride on the desktop like part of the background and only draw my attention when I glanced at it. The addition of color to the CPU bars is still a "maybe". I may decide I don't like it and go to all grey again.

[Snowhog]

LOL, the background is an extreme closeup of a women's face wearing white makeup. Just near the edge of the conky location, her finger with a red nail, is pulling her skin forward. So you're seeing the makeup, the skin stretching, and the extreme closeup of the skin. It's so hi-res you can see the small hairs we all have all over our bodies but seldom notice. At the size and resolution of my monitor (37.5" wide at 3840x1600, aka Ultra-Wide 4K), it's actually quite interesting to look at. I change wallpaper every couple of months anyway.

Yeah, the dimgrey fades into the edge of the wallpaper and they wash out. But since I know what's there, I can see them well enough. I toyed with making them brighter, but they got to be too noticeable.

My idea of the conky was to ride on the desktop like part of the background and only draw my attention when I glanced at it. The addition of color to the CPU bars is still a "maybe". I may decide I don't like it and go to all grey again.

And all of this because it's Linux, and you can!

[vinnywright]

see ,,,,,http://www.ifxgroup.net/conky.htm#cpugraph

VINNY

[MoonRise]

Still using Conky here the last time this came up about graphing the CPU. I use CPU0 and with a linear graph in green. I can say I moved away from an all clear CONKY to one with a semi transparent background that helps the readability of the content due to varying effects from different wallpapers, which I change quite often.

[MoonRise]

Looks as though Vinny beat me to the link of the last time this came up!

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, the cpugraph has color gradients, but they don't work with cpubar as far as I can tell

[MoonRise]

This from the Conky main info page. I think that is correct since they mention it for CPUGRAPH but not CPUBAR.

[TABLE]
[TR="bgcolor: #b4cdcd"]
[TD="align: center"]cpubar[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](cpuN) (height),(width)[/TD]
[TD]Bar that shows CPU usage, height is bar's height 
in pixels. See $cpu for more info on SMP.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #fffafa"]
[TD="align: center"]cpugauge[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](cpuN) (height),(width)[/TD]
[TD]Elliptical gauge that shows CPU usage, height and
width are gauge's vertical and horizontal axis
respectively. See $cpu for more info on SMP.
[/TD]
[/TR]
[TR="bgcolor: #b4cdcd"]
[TD="align: center"]cpugraph[/TD]
[TD="align: center"](cpuN) (height),(width) (gradient colour 1) (gradient colour 2) (scale) (-t) (-l)
[/TD]
[TD]CPU usage graph, with optional colours in hex, 
minus the #. See $cpu for more info on SMP. Uses a 
logarithmic scale (to see small numbers) when you 
use the -l switch. Takes the switch '-t' to use a temperature
gradient, which makes the gradient values change depending 
on the amplitude of a particular graph value (try it and see).
[/TD]
[/TR]
[/TABLE]

[MoonRise]

Maybe this?

https://github.com/brndnmtthws/conky...a-circle-meter

[vinnywright]

and this is how the CPU graph looks at

${cpugraph cpu0 20,120 37c013 c02313 -tl}

wile changing from moderate to high CPU load

and going back from moderate/high to low ,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,,





VINNY

[oshunluvr]

Yeah, I've done the Lua circle thing is the past. Very cool once you get it working. Trying to do something simpler this time, thanks though.

[oshunluvr]

Here's a 1 minute video showing how the CPU bars work during a DVD transcoding session. I recorded on the first 20-30 seconds and the last 20-30. You can see a small "freeze" near the end. Conky seems to stop updating occasionally when something else happens that uses disk IO. This short freeze occurred as Handbrake committed the transcoded file to disk. Seems odd that disk IO would cause this, but that's when it seems to happen. THe conky itself is very small IMO and there's no disk IO functions in it.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/k74egibvxd...52.01.mp4?dl=0

[oshunluvr]

Hmmm, maybe disc IO isn't the problem. I was using a script to scrape my external IP from a website using a script. Running the script manually several times in a row revealed it might be the source of the delay. I change the conky "execi" command from the script to a simple "curl -s www.icanhazip.com" and now it seems snappier.

Now I want to add "Backup status" to the display. That should be interesting.