pingchart

Graphical representation of ping.

Sample output:

Pinging python.org (104.130.43.121)
███████ 237 ms
█████████ 348 ms
██████████ 368 ms
██████████ 388 ms^C
10 packets sent, 10 packets received
0.00% packet loss
307.80 ms average ping
233 ms lowest, 419 ms highest

Installation

Go to the pingchart directory in the terminal and run:

chmod 755 pingchart.py
ln pingchart.py /usr/local/bin/pingchart

Dependancies

pingchart requires Python 3 and uses the sh and blessings libraries, both available on pip. It also requires the dig command, which is often preinstalled. If not, it is available in the package dnsutils on apt.

Usage

pingchart [<url>] [<max lines to display>]

By default, pingchart will ping google.com, and it will display enough lines such that a finished command will fill the terminal window.

The chart will display the last <max lines> results, but it won't stop pinging when it reaches <max lines>, only when quit using ^C.

Notes

• This has been tested on OS X 10.10 with iTerm and Terminal, running zsh, bash, and csh. It has also been tested on a Raspberry Pi on zsh and bash via SSH on iTerm.
• This command can only be run in a terminal. It is not designed to work if stdout is not a terminal. This includes piping and outputting to a file. Please use the regular ping command for those.
• If you encounter a Unicode error when running the command, try writing PYTHONIOENCODING=utf-8 before the pingchart command. If your terminal can't display unicode, you can't use this program.