Qtdmm

[Duncan]

Peter Nikolic posted on Mon, 27 Aug 2012 11:21:45 +0100 as excerpted:

> I useed to use Qtdmm on the older system at home but that box died so
> the rebuilt box is up to date KDE 4.9.00 now qtdmm doe not run  i have
> been looking around for something to replace it with does anyone know of
> something or even if qtdmm is being ported

FWIW, a quick google told me that qtdmm is qt-based (qt2 and qt3, 
apparently not ported to qt4) digital multimeter readout and recorder 
software.  IOW, it's designed to hook up to a specific type of electronic 
meter hardware, without which it's likely to be rather useless.

At this point, it's a pretty safe bet that if it hasn't been ported to 
qt4 already, it's not going to be.  Qt4 has been mature for some time 
now, and development effort is now focused on qt5 (which was due for a 
beta about now, but what with qt ownership transfer from Nokia, the beta 
has been delayed a bit), so while existing qt4-based apps (including all 
of kde4) are likely to continue to be supported for awhile, if it's not 
on qt4 yet, chances are it's not now going to be ported.

There's a smaller chance it'd be ported to qt5, skipping qt4, but that's 
not likely either, as if it hasn't been ported by now, chances are that 
it's basically dead, unless someone else decides to pick up development.


Replacement is the next question.  It's here where even a short 
description like I provided above would have been helpful, as there's a 
fair chance that people might not know what qtdmm is, but still know 
about a replacement, if they knew what they were looking for a 
replacement for.

The first thing I'd suggest is doing the google I just did, if necessary 
to find contact details for the author, then get in touch with him and 
simply ask.  Maybe it simply hasn't been ported because there's already a 
better solution available, and he can suggest that.  Or maybe all he 
needs to know is that someone's still using the app and is interested.  
It could be he's done the port already, and just didn't think anyone was 
interested any longer so he never posted it.  It's simple enough to ask, 
and you'll never know if you don't.


Beyond that... I'm not an expert in the area by far, but what immediately 
struck me when looking at the screenshots is how similar the graphs 
looked to the routine voltage, power, etc, computer status graphs I run 
more or less constantly, here.  There's at least two whole entire kernel 
driver areas dedicated to drivers for sensors of that type, and quite a 
variety of software that can hook into them to drive graphing, logging, 
etc.  lm_sensors is lower level userland software that can be used to 
program and read these sensors and output to the text terminal or to a 
file, and there's a whole host of GUI software that builds on that.  
ksysguard (aka system monitor), the yasp-scripted plasmoid, and 
superkaramba are all kde4 based software that can be used for this, and 
there's gkrellem and various gdesklets, konqy, etc, for gtk and non-kde 
use.

But, what I do NOT know is how well that existing software works with 
generally external sensors, as its more common use and the way I use it 
here is to report on the computer's own system sensors.  I AM 
sufficiently familiar with yasp-scripted and superkaramba at least, that 
I know if there's lower level drivers/software available for those 
external sensors that can make the information available either as text 
files (perhaps in the kernel's /sys tree) or output it to the text 
console as STDOUT, it's very possible to scrape that data and display it 
in the yasp-scripted or superkaramba GUI as text, bar-graphs or plotter/
line-graphs, as desired, because I do just that, file or STDOUT scraping, 
for a number of the outputs I display running plotters for, updating them 
once a second, here.

The big question, then, is whether there's drivers or user-mode software 
available to take the raw output as presented by the external device and 
present it as a text file or as STDOUT.  Chances are, especially for 
relatively common devices, yes.  Linux has better support for this sort 
of thing now than ever before, with a lot of hardware manufacturers 
specifically cooperating with the Linux community to ensure that drivers 
are available for their hardware.

That would explain why this specific specialized software hasn't been 
ported -- no need as there's much more widely applicable general 
solutions now available.

But... not being a specialist in the area, I really don't know the 
specifics.

There are most likely area specific mailing lists and/or web forums 
available, that would have better information.  I'd suggest googling, 
maybe something line your hardware brand and model, and "linux" (with or 
without "driver").  It's quite possible there's already quite a variety 
of supported software available and you don't even know it.  =:^)

-- 
Duncan - List replies preferred.   No HTML msgs.
"Every nonfree program has a lord, a master --
and if you use the program, he is your master."  Richard Stallman

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