Pi-Ping

A quick and simple Python script that checks the status of a website, then uses ThingM's blink(1) USB RGB LED notification light to provide a visual indication of the status.

For those who are probably asking, "What is the blink(1)?", then this should help:

Installation

This requires a few pre-requistes:

• ThingM's blink(1)
• pip
• requests

ThingM's blink(1)

Install in your command line with:

$ sudo apt-get install libusb-1.0-0-dev git-core
$ git clone https://github.com/todbot/blink1.git
$ cd blink1/commandline
$ make

Update udev rules so you don't need to run as sudo every time:

$ cd ~
$ cd blink1/linux
$ sudo cp 51-blink1.rules /etc/udev/rules.d/
$ sudo udevadm control --reload-rules

Unplug the blink(1) and put it back in to complete the process.

pip

Install Python 2 and 3 versions in your command line with:

$ sudo apt-get install -y python-pip python3-pip

requests

Install in your command line with:

$ sudo pip install requests

Clone this repo

To clone this repo, run the following command in your command line:

$ git clone https://github.com/raspberrycoulis/Pi-Ping.git

Usage

The script will, by default, check the HTTP status of Google. You can change this in the code easily, by changing the website variable, replacing "https://www.google.co.uk" with your website.

Before running the script, make sure it is executable by running (assuming you have cloned this in your home directory):

$ cd Pi-Ping
$ chmod +x pi-ping.py

Test out the script by running:

$ ./pi-ping.py

If all goes well, the blink(1) should flash green or red depending on whether the site is up or down.

Running on boot

The script is set to check the status of your set website every 30 minutes (1800 seconds), but to run this on boot you can do so using systemd:

1. Create Unit file

This will tell the Pi to run your script on boot:

sudo nano /lib/systemd/system/ping.service

Then add the following text to your file (you may need to adjust the path for your pi-ping.py script depending on where it is located (the part /home/pi/Pi-Ping/pi-ping.py):

[Unit]
Description=Pi-Ping service by Raspberry Coulis
After=multi-user.target

[Service]
Type=idle
ExecStart=/usr/bin/python /home/pi/Pi-Ping/pi-ping.py

[Install]
WantedBy=multi-user.target

Exit, ctrl + x, and save y to create the service unit file.

2. Set the relevant permissions

Make sure that the permissions are set correctly:

sudo chmod 644 /lib/systemd/system/ping.service

3. Configure systemd

Make sure that systemd can use your newly created unit file:

sudo systemctl daemon-reload
sudo systemctl enable ping.service

Reboot the Pi to test via sudo reboot.

4. Check on the status of your service

Check that the service has started by running:

sudo systemctl status ping.service

If done correctly, you should see that your pi-ping.py script is now running!

Going further

It is very easy to change the colours or the number of times the LED blinks by editing the relevant parts in the pi-ping.py file. It should be pretty self-explanatory, but there is a lot more information on the ThingM Github page regarding the command line tool!

Also, if you feel you can improve this script then please feel free to contribute!