porg
Active Member
Version 0.3 feedback
About/help screen: The mnemonic shortcuts still (c-pu, b-attery,...) still work, but they are not mentioned on the help screen anymore. Why?
Logging info: OK: Now also shown if interval is changed with no active logging.
BUT: The fadeout seems buggy. If you stay on the help screen it stays forever, if you change to another screen, sometimes it fades instantly, sometimes after the screen change the timeout counter seems to be started and it is then faded away. Etc. Not consistent. The logging info fade out should be independent from the screen(s) on which you spend your time will the timeout counts.
At application launch with logging off, the timeout shall be larger. Why? The user sees the fresh screen, needs some orientation time to visually scan the content. By that time, the logging info is already gone. Even better: If logging is off at app launch, the app shall display nothing for $timeout or slightly less seconds, then display the info for $timeout seconds, and then fade.
Log write buffer: OK: Seems to be implemented, as the SD-LED blinks far less often even if the interval is set to 1sec.
Log pause/resume: If you resume logging, the first log should be done immediately, and then the next interval starts, as opposed to wait for the remaining interval time from before the pause. Maybe it already is that way. I cannot say, as due to sysinfo's buffered writing, the SD-LED is no reliable indicator.
Log files:
Plot files:
[*]Recommendations out of this:
[*]TO IMPROVE: Time-axis-labels:
Set their orientation to 90° or 45°, then you can show at least hh:mm:ss or even YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, though for most graphs YYYY-MM-DD will be redundant anyhow (except very long time studies, i.e. low power mode monitoring). But hours are relevant for most cases, as charging and also one long pandora usage session is in the time range of hours.
You also show all other resources if not used (network with link down, SD inserted but empty)
Not showing at all, makes one rather assume, that there is no SWAP configured at all!
Swap related numbers should show up like this:
No swap configured: Indication for "No swap used". At best the text in the appropriate box should say "None" or Nil" or "No swap".
If swap configured: Show how much is used. If it is indeed 0, then just show "0 of X".
0 is also a monitoring value worth knowing, isn't it?
About/help screen: The mnemonic shortcuts still (c-pu, b-attery,...) still work, but they are not mentioned on the help screen anymore. Why?
Logging info: OK: Now also shown if interval is changed with no active logging.
BUT: The fadeout seems buggy. If you stay on the help screen it stays forever, if you change to another screen, sometimes it fades instantly, sometimes after the screen change the timeout counter seems to be started and it is then faded away. Etc. Not consistent. The logging info fade out should be independent from the screen(s) on which you spend your time will the timeout counts.
At application launch with logging off, the timeout shall be larger. Why? The user sees the fresh screen, needs some orientation time to visually scan the content. By that time, the logging info is already gone. Even better: If logging is off at app launch, the app shall display nothing for $timeout or slightly less seconds, then display the info for $timeout seconds, and then fade.
Log write buffer: OK: Seems to be implemented, as the SD-LED blinks far less often even if the interval is set to 1sec.
Log pause/resume: If you resume logging, the first log should be done immediately, and then the next interval starts, as opposed to wait for the remaining interval time from before the pause. Maybe it already is that way. I cannot say, as due to sysinfo's buffered writing, the SD-LED is no reliable indicator.
Log files:
- OK: Log dir structure and file names.
- OK: CSV format (space-padding and semicolon). Works!
Worked in Microsoft Excel, NeoOffice (OpenOffice variant), Apple Numbers.
- Only the dot-notation is problematic if you use a German localisation, as the comma is the German decimal separator, and the dot is rather the symbol to seperate the thousands. But this localisation issue is out of sysinfo's scope. The most you could offer is probably, a user-editanle variable csvSeparator="." in sysinfo's config file. This of course would break compatibility with gnuplot (which uses English notation I guess). At user's own responsibility I'd say.
Plot files:
- TO DISCUSS: Plot dir/file structure:
1) Current approach = Overwrite the plots/*.png fileset according to the most current plotted log.
+ Uses only little of your precious SD card's space. Likely you only want to VIEW (not KEEP/SHARE a graph).
- + Should you WANT to share/save a plot-set, you simply mv appdata/plots/*.png to savelocation/YYYYMMDD-hhmmss/
- ~ In a GUI browser you would simply copy paste the whole folder to another location, then change its name to indicate the session date + time. But then this folder still contains the .gnuplot templates, which you must delete by hand.
- + All graphs ever generated remain on your SD card.
- - Uses quite some storage space for probably anyhow unneeded files.
- + Have a unique dir/file name, need no further moving/renaming.
- + All at one sight.
- + Easy file browser filtering by date OR type, allowing nice side-by-side comparisons.
- - Could get a quite crowded dir, which challenges the user for sure, and probably also the filesystem (FAT32 is sensible for dirs with many files)
- Best for community sharing, as the filename is quite unique.
- The opposite pro/cons of variation (a).
[*]Recommendations out of this:
- The template file set should be appdata/sysinfo/plot-template-set/
Avoids clutter with the pngs.
- Allows to easily manage your own template sets. I.e. you have plot-template-aaa/ plot-template-bbb/ plot-template-ccc/, you simply duplicate the one you want to use and rename it to plot-template-set/
[*]TO IMPROVE: Time-axis-labels:
Set their orientation to 90° or 45°, then you can show at least hh:mm:ss or even YYYY-MM-DD hh:mm:ss, though for most graphs YYYY-MM-DD will be redundant anyhow (except very long time studies, i.e. low power mode monitoring). But hours are relevant for most cases, as charging and also one long pandora usage session is in the time range of hours.
Tested the new app supplemented in the PND. It worked. Some remarks:
- If you quit Ristretto in the MiniMenu environment, you are on the blank black screen. You need to press the Pandora button for 5secs to return to MiniMenu.
- At first I thought there is only the "Battery charge" graph. There are no visual controls, nor the arrow keys work. (You must use Y/X for prev/next and A/B for first/last). If you escape fullscreen (ESC), you still almost not realize that there are multiple files. Both the toolbar (with its next/previous icons) and the thumbnails view are OFF. Only the title bar says "[1/7]", which makes you believe that there's more.
I prefer to keep it that way — without GUI controls in order to have the maximum view of the graph — and mention in the help file that Ristretto uses the ABXY buttons for picture navigation.
- A control overlay on touch or mouse (=nub) event would be fine, but I guess that's not possible with Ristretto.
- Starting Ristretto with visible toolbar is not recommended.
- Starting Ristretto with thumbnails is worth an idea, as this allows not only next/prev first/last navigation, but concerted navigation. This would especially be effective if plot dir/file approach 2 would be used.
Nice feature addition.
This is a conceptional error. Why?
You also show all other resources if not used (network with link down, SD inserted but empty)
Not showing at all, makes one rather assume, that there is no SWAP configured at all!
Swap related numbers should show up like this:
No swap configured: Indication for "No swap used". At best the text in the appropriate box should say "None" or Nil" or "No swap".
If swap configured: Show how much is used. If it is indeed 0, then just show "0 of X".
0 is also a monitoring value worth knowing, isn't it?
