Rainmeter plug-in for HWiNFO 3.2

[stangowner]

Version 3 of the HWiNFO plug-in for Rainmeter is now available and can be downloaded from here:

3.2.0 - November 19, 2016
https://www.hwinfo.com/files/RainmeterPlugin/HWiNFO_3.2.0.rmskin
details here

3.1.0 - March 6, 2016
http://www.hwinfo.com/files/RainmeterPlugin/HWiNFO_3.1.0.rmskin
details here


3.0.0 - January 1, 2016
http://www.hwinfo.com/files/RainmeterPlugin/HWiNFO_3.0.0.rmskin

Please Note: Version 2.0 of this plugin has a dependence on the Visual C++ 2013 runtime libraries. These are no longer being distributed with Rainmeter as of version 3.3. Therefore, if you do not have these runtime libraries already installed on your PC, v2.0 of this plugin will error. Updating to 3.0 will resolve this issue.

What's New

• Added support for remote system monitoring introduced in HWiNFO 5.0
• Updated to the latest versions: HWiNFO 5.10, Rainmeter 3.3 and Visual Studio 2015
• Updated so VC++ runtime libraries are no longer required

Pre-Requisites
To use this plugin, you need to ensure HWiNFO's sensors are running and "Shared Memory Support" is enabled in the HWiNFO settings.

Installation
To install the skin, simply run the downloaded .rmskin file. You should be presented with the following:

Please Note: This included skin does not demonstrate the full capabilities of HWiNFO and this plugin. It is included simply to demonstrate how to use this plugin.

If you will continue to use the included skin (or create one based on this), then you must check the measure IDs included with the skin against the IDs for your hardware. It is possible the values on your PC do not match the ones in the skin. The IDs can be updated in the skin by editing the "Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\HWiNFO\@Resources\HWiNFO.inc" file using a text editor. Then replace the IDs with the matching IDs for your hardware.

Creating Rainmeter Measures
Please read the instructions for creating measures in this post:
http://www.hwinfo.com/forum/Thread-Rainmeter-plug-in-for-HWiNFO-2-0

In addition, version 3 now includes the ability to add monitoring of remote systems into your Rainmeter skins. To do so, you will use the optional HWiNFOHostId parameter. If you do not provide this parameter, the skin will continue to return the values from the local machine.

The sample skin above shows 3 graphs (CPU and dual GPUs) from the local machine, as well as CPU & GPU from two other PCs on the LAN using the new remote monitoring feature.

First, you must configure additional machines to monitor in the HWiNFO settings. There is a good tutorial for this here:
http://www.ghacks.net/2015/07/15/hwinfo32-and-hwinfo64-5-0-ship-with-remote-sensor-monitoring/

Then we can specify which remote machine to connect to by running the included HWiNFOSharedMemoryViewer.exe file. This application has been updated to include a dropdown of remote machines configured in HWiNFO during the previous step. Selecting a remote machine will provide the id you need to provide to this parameter to query that specific machine.

For example, to query the CPU usage on the local machine, we would use a measure like this:

Code:

[HWiNFOCPU0Usage]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\HWiNFO.dll
HWiNFOSensorId=0xF0000300
HWiNFOSensorInstance=0x0
HWiNFOEntryId=0xfe
HWiNFOType=CurrentValue

To return the CPU usage of a remote system, we would also include the Remote Host ID as the HWiNFOHostId parameter:

Code:

[HWiNFORemoteHost1CPU0Usage]
Measure=Plugin
Plugin=Plugins\HWiNFO.dll
HWiNFOHostId=1
HWiNFOSensorId=0xF0000300
HWiNFOSensorInstance=0x0
HWiNFOEntryId=0xfe
HWiNFOType=CurrentValue

More information about creating skins, measures and meters:
http://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/getting...ting-skins
http://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures
https://docs.rainmeter.net/manual/meters/

Skin Authors: The plugin is included in the "Documents\Rainmeter\Skins\HWiNFO\@Resources\RedistrutablePlugin" folder. Feel free to use it in your own works. If you create a skin that you think others may want to use, kindly mention it in this forum.

If you have any questions or issues, please let me know.

Thanks!
Nick

 

[Martin]

RE: Rainmeter plug-in for HWiNFO 3.0

A great New Year's update Thanks Nick !

 

[stangowner]

Rainmeter plug-in for HWiNFO 3.1

This plugin has been updated to version 3.1 to include more granular reported feedback about skin configuration and other related errors.  This allows skin authors to take actions based on results returned, and helps users determine the problem with the skin so it can easily be corrected.
You can download version 3.1 here

There are no changes to the demo skin, only the plugin.  If you are already using this skin, you can run the 3.1 installer and just select the option to update the plugin.  Skin authors will want to install the complete skin in order to gain access to the updated .dll files in the @Resources folder.

When Rainmeter skins can not communicate with HWiNFO properly, or there are configuration issues in the skins, specific error codes will now be returned direct to the skin.  This allows the user to quickly see what the issue is so corrections can be made.

Here is an example of a skin that is having issues returning good data:

Measures that are querying a string value from HWiNFO will return an appropriate error string now instead of just no value.  An example above is "HWI_ERROR_INVALID_SENSOR_ID".  Measures that return a number will now return an error specific code in the -9000 to -9999 range instead of 0.  These codes can be used to determine the specific error for those measures.  Above you can see that -9201, -9200 and -9102 are all being returned.

Once all errors are corrected, the skin would now look like this again:

The list of error conditions are below.  The number and error name on the same line are identical.  Which one that is returned just depends on the measure type.

-9000 : HWI_ERROR_NOT_CONNECTED
-9001 : HWI_ERROR_REMOTE_HOST_NOT_CONNECTED
-9002 : HWI_ERROR_DEAD
-9003 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_SIGNATURE
-9004 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_VERSION
-9100 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_SENSOR_ID
-9101 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_SENSOR_INSTANCE
-9102 : HWI_ERROR_SENSOR_NOT_FOUND
-9200 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_ENTRY_ID
-9201 : HWI_ERROR_ENTRY_NOT_FOUND
-9300 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_RETURN_TYPE
-9400 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_HOST_ID
-9999 : HWI_ERROR_INVALID_READING

Logging has been enhanced to provide more information that is more accurate.  You can find this information in the Rainmeter->About dialog on the log tab.  These entries are only written when a skin is refreshed (not in real-time).  This includes when the skin is loaded, as well as when the skin is refreshed.  So for example, if one of your measures is returning -9001 and you don't exactly know what that means, simply refresh the skin and look at the log.  In this case it would correlate to the top line (remote host 0 is not reachable).  In general, log entries of type 'Error' have an issue which prevents the skin from functioning entirely (for example, HWiNFO is not running).  Entries of type 'Warning' indicate the issue is isolated to the specific measure, and the skin should otherwise function for measures with a good configuration.  Here is an example of the updated log output:

Rainmeter also shows measure values on the Skins tab.  These are now displaying specific results as well.  Therefore, you can easily get a centralized list of all the issues.  In the example below, you can see that there are several text and several number measures with configuration problems.  Looking in the "Value" column, the first 5 entries are good, but the rest all have configuration issues.

Please let me know if you have any questions or issues.

- Nick

 

[stangowner]

RE: Rainmeter plug-in for HWiNFO 3.1

This plugin has been updated to version 3.2.  You can download version 3.2 here

Included in this release are:

1) Better control over error reporting
A new parameter has been added to give you control over the error reporting options introduced in v3.1.  This new parameter is "HWiNFOLogHandler" and has the following options:

Missing: no logging in skin or Rainmeter log
0: same as missing (no logging)
1: log to Rainmeter
2: log to skin
3: logs to both the Rainmeter log and the skin (1+2)

See the updated skin for examples.

2) Fixed an issue where errors displayed in the skin for string values were not updating once the error condition was resolved.
There was an issue where an error condition would cause string values to report the error in the skin, but this text was not updated once the error condition was resolved without reloading the skin.  This has been resolved.  Strings will now update properly.  This did not affect numerical values, as those were properly updating previously.

3) Added a dump option to the HWiNFOSharedMemoryViewer.exe application.
This helper application has been updated from 3.0.0 to 3.0.1 to add a new feature.  If you open the "About" dialog (by clicking the icon in the dialog's title bar and selecting it from the menu) there is now a link to create a dump of the application's contents.  This will create a text file with all the available information for the sensors (same as the values in the sensor tree).  This may be useful for a consolidated list, or for further technical troubleshooting.  The resulting .dump file can be viewed with any text editor.  You can also obtain the same results by launching HWiNFOSharedMemoryViewer.exe with a /dump parameter.  Note using this parameter is not silent, the dialog will still be shown, but also create the dump at the same time.