# Reporting Raspberry Pi System Metrics to InfluxDB

> How to set up regular system stat reports from a Raspberry Pi into a local InfluxDB

Author: Simon Hearne (https://simonhearne.com/about/)
Published: 2020-01-07
Canonical: https://simonhearne.com/2020/pi-metrics-influx/
Tags: homeautomation, raspberrypi

---
Now that you've [got your Pi set up with Influx & Grafana](/2020/pi-influx-grafana/), it's time to start collecting some data! We will use a simple Python script to collect system statistics and push it to Influx - you can use this as-is or modify it to your needs.

We will need to first install the PIP package manager if it is not already on your Pi:

```bash
sudo apt install -y python-pip
```

And then use pip to install the python packages `psutil` and `influxdb`:

```bash
sudo pip install psutil influxdb
```

The python script below will use `psutil` to collect some system stats and `influx` to insert them into your influx db:

```python
#!/usr/bin/env python

import datetime
import psutil
from influxdb import InfluxDBClient

# influx configuration - edit these
ifuser = "grafana"
ifpass = "<yourpassword>"
ifdb   = "home"
ifhost = "127.0.0.1"
ifport = 8086
measurement_name = "system"

# take a timestamp for this measurement
time = datetime.datetime.utcnow()

# collect some stats from psutil
disk = psutil.disk_usage('/')
mem = psutil.virtual_memory()
load = psutil.getloadavg()

# format the data as a single measurement for influx
body = [
    {
        "measurement": measurement_name,
        "time": time,
        "fields": {
            "load_1": load[0],
            "load_5": load[1],
            "load_15": load[2],
            "disk_percent": disk.percent,
            "disk_free": disk.free,
            "disk_used": disk.used,
            "mem_percent": mem.percent,
            "mem_free": mem.free,
            "mem_used": mem.used
        }
    }
]

# connect to influx
ifclient = InfluxDBClient(ifhost,ifport,ifuser,ifpass,ifdb)

# write the measurement
ifclient.write_points(body)
```

[View gist on GitHub](https://gist.github.com/simonhearne/7a8ef5a792050b89bd708fb754be0bb4#file-rpi-stats-influx-py)

Create this script in your home directory, e.g. `/home/pi/rpi-stats-influx.py` and make the script executable with `chmod +x rpi-stats-influx.py`.

Test the script out by running it with `./rpi-stats-influx.py` and check that no errors are thrown. If all is good, we can set the script to run reqularly using `cron`

Run `crontab -e` to edit your user's crontab and add an entry `* * * * * /home/pi/rpi-stats-influx.py` to the bottom of the file, this will run the script every minute. The script is very lightweight so running every minute should be fine.

See [the docs for `psutil`](https://psutil.readthedocs.io/en/latest/) to get ideas for other stats you can collect.

You can now simply add a panel to your Grafana instance to show your system stats over time. [Here is a sample dashboard](https://gist.github.com/simonhearne/e4fd4d9f94c302a5847324a48724c6eb) you can import which includes the panel shown below:

![Pi Stats Grafana dashboard.](https://simonhearne.com/images/grafana-pi-stats.png)