[Gnuplot-info] Window and event chart

[Aaron R. <aar...@gm...>]

Hello all,

I'm new to gnuplot and am hoping to get some advice on how to
accomplish the goal I'm trying to get to and/or improvements to what I
have so far.

I'm trying to make a chart that shows windows of a given time duration
and specific events,  that occurred at a given time. The events are
grouped by type and source. The specific example is trying to show
which sensors in my house (motion, temperature, lights) are triggered
over a given time. I'd like to be able to show a window that indicates
the time a room is occupied and then samples from temperature in that
room. There may be multiple windows for the same run that I want to
have on the same line.

So far, here is what I have:
reset

#use for saving image
#set terminal png
#set output 'plot.png'

set title "Test plot"

#data file with measurements
DATAFILE='testdata'

#clean up the borders
set border 1
set xtics nomirror
set ytics nomirror
#unset ytics

#create map to have all the events of a given type have same style
stylemap(string) = (string eq 'TEMPMEASUREMENT' ? 1: \
                   string eq 'MOTION' ? 2 : \
                   1/0)

#map of each potential source of an event
sourcemap(index) = ( index == 1 ? 'ROOM1_TEMPSENSOR' : \
                   index == 2 ? 'ROOM1_MOTIONSENSOR' : \
                   index == 3 ? 'ROOM2' : \
                   1/0)
#test room occupied window data
ENTERTIME=0
EXITTIME=100
ENTERTIME_1=120
EXITTIME_1=150

#window
#TODO: yticlabel
#TODO: dynamic creation from datafile
set object 1 rect from ENTERTIME,0 to EXITTIME,0.1 fc rgb 'black'
set object 2 rect from ENTERTIME_1,0 to EXITTIME_1,0.1 fc rgb 'black'

set xrange[ENTERTIME-10:EXITTIME+10]
#TODO: set max to total index used
set yrange[-1:10]
set autoscale ymax

#add some style
set style line stylemap('TEMPMEASUREMENT') lt rgb "green" lw 3 pt 50
set style line stylemap('MOTION') lt rgb "blue" lw 3 pt 6 ps 2

#plot data.
plot DATAFILE using 3:1:ytic(sourcemap($1)) index 0 with points
notitle ls stylemap('TEMPMEASUREMENT'), \
     DATAFILE using 3:1:ytic(sourcemap($1)) index 1 with points
notitle ls stylemap('MOTION'), \
     DATAFILE using 3:1:ytic(sourcemap($1)) index 2 with points
notitle ls stylemap('TEMPMEASUREMENT')

###data file sample
#WHO WHAT WHEN
1 TEMPMEASUREMENT 10 1
1 TEMPMEASUREMENT 20 1
1 TEMPMEASUREMENT 30 1
1 TEMPMEASUREMENT 40 1
1 TEMPMEASUREMENT 50 1


2 MOTION 15
2 MOTION 25
2 MOTION 35
2 MOTION 45
2 MOTION 55


3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 13
3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 23
3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 33
3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 43
3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 53
3 TEMPMEASUREMENT 63


The questions I have:
1) Is there a better way to do the time windows other then using
objects? I really want to have all the data in data file. Is there a
way to have the object pull the enter/exit time from the data file? I
want to also add a label at the the ylabel for the windows. A yticmark
if you will. How can I add one that isn't tied to a data point (more
reason to want to pull windows from datafile. Just have some that y=0
that is labeled ROOM_OCCUPIED:      __________            ________
_____   _____    ___________
2) From what I have read online, I can't use a string for the y value.
That is why I have the mapping functions to take the index (column
one) and translate it to the name for the ytic. Is there a way to do
this will out the map?
3) I want to get the "magic text" out of the plot call? I have tried
everything but I can't seem to find a way to pass the string from the
datafile into the stylemap call. I have tried
stylemap($2),stylemap(stringcolumn(2)), and a few others. All fail.

I know I can probably just take the strings out of the datafile and
then just have two maps: source_index->source_name and
style_index->name (for key). But I wanted to ask if there might be an
easily or other way to do this. I'd love to not have those maps
(source map mainly since I want it to be dynamic from datafile/ styles
will not change that much) and be able to have all the strings in the
datafile itself. That will let the data files be more human readable
and have all the information to allow for a generic gnuplot script to
generate ( use iterator to through all the datafiles instead of
indexes within a single file).

Any suggestions or comments would be great. I'm sure I have done
things wrong/overly complex since I'm still new to gnuplot. Any coarse
corrections would be great before I get in too much of a rabbit hole.

Thanks.