Project:LHS Graphs and Visualizations

LHS Graphs and Visualizations
Members	Elliot
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Overview

I'd like to supplement the Cacti graphs that we have for LHS bandwidth and power with metrics that provide insight to the growth of our community and organisation over time.

Phase 1 is complete and we now chart the following:

• Number of members
• IRC activity
• Wiki activity
• Mailing list activity

Later I'd like to investigate:

• Website visitors and/or page impressions
• Space occupancy

In progress

Space occupancy

I have located two Laser Diode Retroreflective Sensors in our stores which I intend to use to monitor space occupancy by having the beams cross the main doorway. The beams will be staggered so that direction (arriving, leaving) can be determined by the order in which the beams are broken. I was thinking of mounting them at waist height.

• This will probably get caught out by clusters of people: --81.105.17.61
  • We only need an approximate count
  • The doorway is narrow so it's unlikely that the steps of more than one individual will overlap.
  • Most of the time people won't arrive in clusters
• Can we detect some other event such as the door opening after a prolonged lights-out period to force the count to zero? --81.105.17.61
  • Yes, using the door/lights data for reset would be good if we get large amounts of drift - but I don't plan to just yet
  • This might fail if people spend the night there. AIUI this happens rarely enough that we may not care about the inaccuracy.
  • We could also use some kind of probabilistic model with the 'door-open' and 'bell' data

These sensors appear to be in working order. They'd should be safe to use below child-head height. They were manufactured in 1996 and use a Class II laser rated at 3mW with a wavelength of 655-670nm (datasheet). The model number is: Q45BB6LL

A good signal can be obtained at 1.5m by using a reflector made of aluminium tape.

• Simple harness

Desired

Website visitors and/or page impressions

The main site and the Wiki use Google Analytics and this has an API. This documented method looks promising:

 https://www.google.com/analytics/feeds/data?metrics=ga%3Avisits%2Cga%3Apageviews&start-date=2010-11-29&end-date=2010-12-13&max-results=50

Done

To chart the initial metrics various bits of data are exposed in a Cacti friendly way.

Number of members

COMPLETE - but may have to wait 12 months before it becomes interesting.

This data is stored in an Sqlite database on Turing. See the Schema. It can be queried like so:

 SELECT COUNT(id)
 FROM users
 WHERE subscribed = true;

Cacti runs on babbage but the members database is on Turing. There is a PHP script on Turing to expose the member numbers and then a script on babbage to pull this in with a HTTP request.

Code: https://github.com/londonhackspace/monitoring URL: http://london.hackspace.org.uk/member_stats.php

Wiki statistics

COMPLETE

• We get this using the MediaWiki API:

 http://wiki.hackspace.org.uk/w/api.php?action=query&meta=siteinfo&siprop=statistics&format=xml

It returns:

 <?xml version="1.0"?>
 <api>
   <query>
     <statistics
       pages="759"
       articles="215"
       views="229656"
       edits="7368"
       images="186"
       users="166"
       activeusers="22"
       admins="61"
       jobs="13"
     />
   </query>
 </api>

A Perl script generates the following output for cacti: pages:759 articles:215 views:229656 edits:7368 images:186 users:166 activeusers:22 admins:61 jobs:13

Code: https://github.com/londonhackspace/monitoring

IRC statistics

COMPLETE

There is a bot (ircensus) in the #london-hack-space channel that collects data on the following:

• Active users (/5min)
• Number of messages (/5min)
• Total users

This bot runs on Babbage and has an HTTP interface that outputs: london-hack-spaceMessages:5 london-hack-spaceActiveUsers:2 london-hack-spaceTotalUsers:102

 http://localhost:42002/

Mailing list activity

COMPLETE

• My thanks to JamesG for his assistance and '78.86.160.161' for the original idea. We poll and scrape the groups page for members and and message count.

 http://groups.google.com/group/london-hack-space

We have a script that outputs: members:693 messages:3123

Code: https://github.com/londonhackspace/monitoring