It is currently March 29th, 2024, 3:08 pm

Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Share and get help with Plugins and Addons
sgtevmckay

Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by sgtevmckay »

As we move forward, we find that we need to update certain 3rd party dll's (addons) that may have been abandoned, and will no longer work in Windows Vista or 7.

So once again I am calling upon the community for help in fixing or creating a new addon.

This time we are looking to have a temperature monitor made.
I feel that this is a vital tool that Rainmeter needs to have,
Un-like the other requests this will have some needs/requests attached to it.

Must be:
  • We are looking to have this self contained (No use of outside or 3rd party software: ie, MBM5 or SpeedFan)
Requesting (If at all Possible):
  • Ability to monitor each CPU core individually
    Monitor GPU temps
    Monitor any other available on-board temps.
    Fans speed would be nice, but unnecessary
That is about it, if you feel up to trying, by all means you will have the full support of the forum behind you, and any help that can be rendered will be at your disposal.

I will see if I can track down a starter/open source code to get started, but do not wait on me if you have something in mind.
tari
Posts: 1
Joined: August 7th, 2009, 4:59 pm

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by tari »

sgtevmckay wrote:Must be:
  • We are looking to have this self contained (No use of outside or 3rd party software: ie, MBM5 or SpeedFan)
The trick here is someone needs to write a device driver which the plugin loads. It's not a huge problem, except on 64-bit Vista and 7, which require a signed driver before they'll even load it (unless you run through a sequence of things and disable that altogether, which is far from a good solution IMHO).

The cost to get drivers signed is somewhere in the several-hundred-dollar range, far from a trivial amount for most anyone who would volunteer to build such a thing.

If driving signing is out of the question, you could still do it, but be unable to support 64-bit Vista and 7, which seems to me a poor solution at best.
Don't Panic
User avatar
jsmorley
Developer
Posts: 22628
Joined: April 19th, 2009, 11:02 pm
Location: Fort Hunt, Virginia, USA

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by jsmorley »

tari wrote: The trick here is someone needs to write a device driver which the plugin loads. It's not a huge problem, except on 64-bit Vista and 7, which require a signed driver before they'll even load it (unless you run through a sequence of things and disable that altogether, which is far from a good solution IMHO).

The cost to get drivers signed is somewhere in the several-hundred-dollar range, far from a trivial amount for most anyone who would volunteer to build such a thing.

If driving signing is out of the question, you could still do it, but be unable to support 64-bit Vista and 7, which seems to me a poor solution at best.
The program "Core Temp" http://download.cnet.com/Core-Temp-32-bit/3000-12565_4-10794077.html works great for me and runs as a portable app without installing anything, and consisting of a single .exe file. I'm on Seven.
sgtevmckay

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by sgtevmckay »

I do not know if a driver set is even necessary, it all depends on how the information is accessed and drawn down.
there are several ways to do this, the most obvious would be via the bios set on the MoBo and the Graphics card. There are other methods.

After researching the Core Temp, I am starting to worry that the creator may have gone off grid (Arthur Liberman), as his site is down, But there was a posting to a remote site back in June.
The latest update is dated August 03, 2009
There is both a 32bit and 64bit available here:
http://www.bestfreewaredownload.com/a-arthur-liberman-16548-freeware.html

As brought to our attention, he does utilize some type of driver set, and good lord knows how he covered it and kept the Core Temp software free.
In several different websites: I am not seeing any kind of Licensing or restrictions as to use. It is not licensed, but Core Temp is not GNU or FOSS either :roll:

I would attempt to contact Arthur Liberman, and see about access or collaboration to his core software :ugeek:

What say you all?
dragonmage
Developer
Posts: 1270
Joined: April 3rd, 2009, 4:31 am
Location: NC, US

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by dragonmage »

If he is willing or able to open the source, it could become part of Rainmeter. If not then it would have to be downloaded somewhere else.

I worry about the driver thing, in relation to limited accounts.
sgtevmckay

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by sgtevmckay »

As I have said before, I am no programmer, but there are excellent examples of programs that access this information outside of drivers.

If it comes down to drivers then we are essentially stopped as they will have to be approved by Microsoft at considerable expense (Win, Lose or Draw).

My feeling is that windows pulls down partial Bios info, this may be a direction, but I also do not believe that drivers are the only solution.
There must be more!

There may also be the possibility to pull down the information based on ACPI for windows to seriously consider

As for contacting the program developer, this is turning into quite a chore, as many of the sites that offer the software do not list contact information, but also his home site has recently been shut down.

I will keep looking into this.

Does anyone know how the old temp reader operated?
User avatar
elestel
Developer
Posts: 57
Joined: May 6th, 2009, 6:06 am

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by elestel »

tari wrote:The trick here is someone needs to write a device driver which the plugin loads. It's not a huge problem, except on 64-bit Vista and 7, which require a signed driver before they'll even load it (unless you run through a sequence of things and disable that altogether, which is far from a good solution IMHO).

The cost to get drivers signed is somewhere in the several-hundred-dollar range, far from a trivial amount for most anyone who would volunteer to build such a thing.

If driving signing is out of the question, you could still do it, but be unable to support 64-bit Vista and 7, which seems to me a poor solution at best.
As far as I know, ACPI/WMI can be used to get CPU temperature. But older motherboard may not support this feature.

The custom driver approach may not be feasible since every motherboard has its own sensor chip like LM75, LM78, Winbond...etc.
sgtevmckay

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by sgtevmckay »

The ACPI also draws a general temperature, it will not draw information directly from the CPU, GPU, or HDD
The general reading can be significantly different from actual sensor temperature
sgtevmckay

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by sgtevmckay »

There is always something like this, but the cost is making my eyeballs bleed
http://www.cpuid-pro.com/devkits.php
nick5768
Posts: 1
Joined: August 10th, 2009, 1:30 pm

Re: Call for a Coder to build a Tempurature Monitor

Post by nick5768 »

Ok, I looked into this a couple months ago, more specifically at monitoring Core i7 but this appears to apply across the board to all Intel Core processors.

The information about built-in Windows Tools was conflicting. The general gist was that what was in WMI was read at boot and not updated or not there at all. The only way to get proper "real-time" readings was for a motherboard vendor to write their own WMI driver or write that ability into their existing drivers. As far as most of these posters knew, no one was doing that.

Ok here's the promising bit. Intel CPU's have a temperature sensor onboard, that you can read by accessing the MSR register directly. This is really low level, but there is an open source driver (modified BSD License) that will give you the Ring 0 access to do so, and it's signed :).

Openlibsys - http://openlibsys.org/

A guy in Macedonia has written a small program that does monitor the temperature of the CPU and he includes the source code with the program (GPLv2 is in main.cpp so this is open source as well).

"Temperature" - http://shefot.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=48&Itemid=37

There is some weirdness in how they report the temperature, basically it's the number of degrees away from the "thermal threshold" of your CPU. That can vary depending on CPU but a general number is available in the datasheet for each processor on the Intel website. The Core i7 920 for example is 100 (all units Celsius). This may vary for individual CPUs. All of this is explained in great detail by the author of Real Temp, another openlibsys based program here:

Real Temp - http://www.techpowerup.com/realtemp/docs.php

The extent of my coding knowledge is some limited Python so I left it there. I've been procrastinating making this post so someone who is a real software developer could take a look at it, sorry folks :-/

Anyways, hope this helps and thanks to anyone who does take a crack at it because temperature measurements would be a great addition to Rainmeter.