Controller - Cache

Cache layer to collect data while offline

Controller details

Type: Controller

Name: Cache

Status: DEVELOPMENT

GitHub: C016.cpp

Maintainer: TD-er

Change log

Changed in version 2.0: …

added 2019/04/05 Initial pre-alpha version of this plugin.

Description

This controller is a cache layer to collect data while not connected to a network.

The data will first be stored in RTC memory, which will survive a crash/reboot and even an OTA update.

If this RTC buffer is full, it will be flushed to whatever is set here as storage.

Data Format

Each time a plugin sends data to this controller, a sample set is stored.

A typical sample set contains:

  • Timestamp (Default: Unix Time, but can be switched to “local time” in the controller settings)

  • task index delivering the data

  • 4 float values

Storage

The controller can save the samples from RTC memory to several places on the flash:

  • Files on SPIFFS

  • Part reserved for OTA update (TODO)

  • Unused flash after the partitioned space (TODO)

Data Delivery

The controller can deliver the data to:

  • JavaScript to process the data inside the browser. See the dump6.htm file in the misc folder.

  • Upload bin files to some server (HTTP post?) (TODO)

  • Provide a sample to any connected controller (TODO)

  • Do nothing and let some extern host pull the data from the node. (TODO)

  • Feed it to some plugin (e.g. a display to show a chart) (TODO)

Fetch and Decode data in the browser

The dump6.htm (in misc directory) file should be uploaded to the file system of the ESP. When there are cache controller bin files present on the file system, open this htm file from the file browser in ESPEasy into a new tab in your browser.

This presents a large button “Fetch cache files”. When pressed, the JavaScript in this htm file will fetch JSON information from ESPEasy describing the column names and the binary cache files present on the file system.

Those bin files will be fetched and decoded in the browser. When done, a “Download” button will be presented which generates and downloads a new CSV file.

This file can be opened in any spreadsheet program. LibreNMS has proven to be the easiest to parse the column separators and make the best guess on the data types in each cell.