systemp

A command line (CLI) utility program to display a Linux computers CPU temperature called: 'systemp'.

The program is written in Nim.

The program currently only works on Linux based systems as it uses the /proc file system to obtain the current CPU temperature.

Programs Purpose

The program was written to check up on the current temperature of a couple of Raspberry Pi 4B computers.

I already had a similar tool written in C called rpi-temp. This however only works with the Raspbian version of Linux, so did not work when running the my Raspberry Pi on Ubuntu 64bit ARM Linux instead. So I re-created a tool that worked with any Debian based Linux, such as Debian, Ubuntu, and Raspbian. It also works with other non Raspberry Pi computer too.

Using the Program

When run, the command outputs the following information, the details of which will vary depending on the computers architecture. Below is the output from a Raspberry Pi 4B:

'pi4server' Linux 4.19.97-v7l+ (ARM 4 cores) @ Wed 06 May 2020 20:46:14
CPU => 33.1 °C 

Output is similar when run from Ubuntu 20.04 Linux running on a Microsoft Surface:

'surfacemoons' Linux 5.4.0-29-generic (AMD64 8 cores) @ Wed 06 May 2020 20:44:56
CPU => 26.8 °C

The tool is often used with ssh to cycle through the different computers and output each of their current CPU temperatures to screen. This is done by first create a bash alias, and saving it in the ~/.bash_aliases file. The alias I use is below:

alias alltemps='ssh -q simon@pi4server.local ~/GenIsys-Pi4/assets/systemp && ssh -q simon@pi4moons.local ~/GenIsys-Pi4/assets/systemp && ssh -q simon@pi4mobi.local ~/GenIsys-Pi4/assets/systemp'

When the above bash alias is run with the command alltemps the output is as follows:

'pi4server' Linux 4.19.97-v7l+ (ARM 4 cores) @ Wed 06 May 2020 20:46:14
CPU => 33.1 °C 
'pi4moons' Linux 4.19.97-v7l+ (ARM 4 cores) @ Wed 06 May 2020 20:46:15
CPU => 32.1 °C 
'pi4mobi' Linux 4.19.97-v7l+ (ARM 4 cores) @ Wed 06 May 2020 20:46:16
CPU => 32.6 °C 

The tool also has a brief help output obtained with the command: systemp -h or systemp --help:

Purpose
¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
 Use the 'systemp' application to display the current CPU
  temperature of the Linux computer it is run on.

  Usage
  ¯¯¯¯¯
  Run 'systemp' with:

  Flag                 Description                       Default Value
  ¯¯¯¯                 ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯                       ¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯¯
  -h | --help          display help information          false
  -v | --version       display program version           false

As indicated by the above help screen output, the version information for the program can also be checked with the command: systemp -v or systemp --version:

'systemp' is version: '1.0.3' running on 'Linux (ARM64)' (arm64).
Compiled on: 2020-07-24 @ 21:16:09 UTC.
Copyright (c) 2020 Simon Rowe.

Built as 'release' using Nim compiler version: '1.2.4'.

For licenses and further information visit:
   - systemp application     :  https://github.com/wiremoons/systemp/
   - Nim language & compiler :  https://github.com/nim-lang/Nim/

All is well.

Building 'systemp'

Nim supports many operating systems and hardware platforms, but this particular program will only work on a Linux based system as it uses the /proc file system to obtain the current CPU temperature.

To build 'systemp' from source on a Linux based system, the following steps can be used:

1. Install the Nim compiler and a C compiler such as gcc or CLang. More information on installing Nim can be found here: Nim Download.
2. Once Nim is installed on your system, you can clone this GitHub repo with the command: git clone https://github.com/wiremoons/systemp.git
3. Then in the cloned code directory for systemp use Nimble to build a release version with the command: nimble release. Other Nimble build commands can be seen by running: nimble tasks.
4. The compiled binary of systemp can now be found in the ./bin sub directory. Just copy it somewhere in you path, and it should work when run.

License

The application is provided under the MIT open source license. A copy of the MIT license file is here.