This screenshot looks awesome. The theme and format are solid. I'm not going to lie. I would like data usage, and a user percentage breakdown, especially if i could filter by date range. Either way this is a start of where I'm trying to go.
PlexWatch now includes the IP addresses, and Eleese is working on making a front end web solution. I am helping him test it out now, take a look at how slick it is. I also updated the OP with a call out for specific IP logging.
That screenshot looks awesome. The only thing that would make that perfect is showing at what quality they are using, and how much bandwidth they used up. Not sure if that's possible in the Plex infrastructure, but it would be nice.
This is a great thread. That UI is looking very useful. My feature request would be to have more bandwidth logging per user and total. A bonus is the ability to remove certain users or local streaming.
This is a great thread. That UI is looking very useful. My feature request would be to have more bandwidth logging per user and total. A bonus is the ability to remove certain users or local streaming.
I am guessing the bandwidth shown is just the Size of the file (maybe the size * percent watched), please correct me if I am wrong. Plex does not keep track of bandwidth, but if those endpoints ever exist (which I doubt), it would be added. Note also, if the video was transcoded, the size would not reflect that. There has to be some sort of app out there that will give you a breakdown of bandwidth usage per IP address.
I am guessing the bandwidth shown is just the Size of the file (maybe the size * percent watched), please correct me if I am wrong. Plex does not keep track of bandwidth, but if those endpoints ever exist (which I doubt), it would be added. Note also, if the video was transcoded, the size would not reflect that. There has to be some sort of app out there that will give you a breakdown of bandwidth usage per IP address.
I have found some apps that do that but often have issues with them. In the end, I haven't any monitoring solution that works well for me on Windows. I suspect you're right about the file sizes and plex not providing the information needed for transcoded files but hopefully someone can shed some light.
AntiTrust just sent me the 'PlexWatch' direction after I posted in another thread that I'd like to know what my shared friends are doing, and not only in the 'Now Playing', but 'in the past' too.
How much closer are we to a WebUI and PMS Channel view for Windows PMS?
I have no fear of CLI. I grew up with it, and still use it somewhat frequently in my career.
I just don't want to view data display using it. :)
Show me pretty themed text. :)
AntiTrust just sent me the 'PlexWatch' direction after I posted in another thread that I'd like to know what my shared friends are doing, and not only in the 'Now Playing', but 'in the past' too.
How much closer are we to a WebUI and PMS Channel view for Windows PMS?
I have no fear of CLI. I grew up with it, and still use it somewhat frequently in my career.
I just don't want to view data display using it. :)
Show me pretty themed text. :)
plexWatch keeps history. There is also a web frontend coming soon. You will probably never get an answer if/when PMS will get this. It will probably be coming, but who knows when and exactly how it will be implemented.
What I'm asking is, how much closer are those working on the WebUI front end of PlexWatch to having it ready for general release?
And, I saw mention of something in channel/plugin format. Do you already have PlexWatch info in RarFlix?
Loving where PlexWatch is going. Any chance of reporting features, and or tracking of data usage per user?
Loving where PlexWatch is going. Any chance of reporting features, and or tracking of data usage per user?
The web front end will give you reporting features. The cli already does this, but it's pretty basic.
Real Data usage will never happen unless plex keeps track of that ( which it probably never will ). The best solution is to find some app that keeps track of your bandwidth usage per IP address.
Fair enough. Keep up the great work. I'll sort that out myself the best I can and report back for those interested.
What I'm asking is, how much closer are those working on the WebUI front end of PlexWatch to having it ready for general release?
And, I saw mention of something in channel/plugin format. Do you already have PlexWatch info in RarFlix?
Eleese is the guy to ask about the plexWatch frontend.
RARflix will never have anything to do with plexWatch. RARflix is valid for anyone to use with their own PMS server with or without plexWatch. I would love if someone created a plugin/channel for plexWatch. If they did, then yes, RARflix would be able to utilize it, but so would the normal Plex Roku app. I would definitely answer any questions about plexWatch if someone decided to take up the task of writing a Plugin for it!
Fair enough. Keep up the great work. I'll sort that out myself the best I can and report back for those interested.
This may not help you much because it is only Mac OS X, but Little Snitch will track usage by IP and Application which makes tracking bandwidth by user pretty trivial. Would still love to get it into PlexWatch/Web.
Example:
I appreciate the help, but that looks like it's showing how much the server is using with all combined users / ip's and not broke down, but different streaming IP's. Also, yeah I no longer use macs, it's been years. My last mac was a power pc 750/75, and then an official G3 at school for some time. But at home, mainly windows, and a few linux distros like Android, Ubuntu, etc. Mainly Windows. Thanks though. As for my server, currently on Windows Server 2008 R2. Cool setup though, I dig it. Good to know how much bandwidth plex uses. It's a start.
While I don't currently have a solution I can offer for plexWatch/Web, I can share what I currently use for network monitoring if it helps anyone that wants to get started.
I use pfSense as a router/firewall and there are some great tools built-in for tracking WAN real-time bandwidth usage and historical stats. On top of this there are several 3rd party packages that can be installed. ntop, darkstat, vnstat and iftop. iftop can also be installed on any Linux device which is where I run my Plex Media Server. The downside to iftop is that there are no logging or database capabilities that I know so it's a real-time only tool.
Along with these tools I use The Dude for global network monitoring (icmp, snmp, wmi, port checks, etc). I've recently tied in some of the charts from this app into my personal instance of plexWatch/Web for quick checks of cpu, memory and bandwidth.
When I used to run PMS on Windows I found the Windows Resource Monitor to be a very helpful tool for tracking not only bandwidth from users but also the files Plex was accessing. This was before the days of PMS v0.9.8. I was just thinking there are probably logging capabilities for Resource Monitor and/or Perfmon for possible historical stats of per ip/user bandwidth. Anyone know? This obviously won't help Linux users but it's a thought.
Anyway hopefully some of these tools can help you guys. I plan to release a first version of plexWatchWeb shortly.
Eleese, thanks for ideas in mean time.
I've been using freeware (canary release actually, allows few more sensors) of PRTG for windows for my overall bandwidth monitoring. (though my router isn't snmp capable, I have an 8 port switch that ties my house ethernet wiring together that is)
PRTG is basically a commercial version of MRTG, but, is a bit more 'windows' user friendly.
(MRTG runs fine on windows, but required more tech setup than I wanted, again, i'm capable, just time limited these years)
I look forward to your release (and/or PMS dev team doing their own version of historical user reporting)
Def looking forward to the release, till then I'm looking for bandwidth monitors, found a few last night. Also, possibly looking to mirror eleese's setup as well for the realtime info. This is great. Thanks everyone for your contributions. Let me know if I can be of help. I do graphics and web design.
For those interested, Eleese released the initial version of his plexWatchWeb earlier today.
http://forums.plexapp.com/index.php/topic/82819-plexwatchweb-a-web-front-end-for-plexwatch/
Sadly the PlexWatch/Web cant be set to connect to alternitive ports, not yet at least. But regarding bandwidth monitoring, since my consumer-grade cisco router doesn't support snmp I've been using Monitis to monitor all my servers, and to read out the bandwidth usage of Plex usage I just look at the graph for the VM that hosts the public PMS. It doesn't give me any totals, so for that I use NetMeter. Although since my user base is growing rapidly on both Plex and other services (FTP, VPN etc.. ), I feel the need to monitor pure fiber usage, so I've been looking at both smoothwall and pfsense. I also have a dedicated website I just put up with uptime/response time graphs, portals to various services and information about the setup to make it easier for users to access resources.
This is how my PMS VM monitoring stats look like with Monitis (which is super easy to set up btw, but then again, it isn't free)
I use DU Meter on my Windows PMS machine to monitor bandwidth and connections. Though I don't use it as often anymore for connections now that Plex handles most of that (though not for music files).
