{"id":343,"date":"2017-05-31T08:59:25","date_gmt":"2017-05-31T07:59:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/?p=343"},"modified":"2017-06-07T21:44:09","modified_gmt":"2017-06-07T20:44:09","slug":"raspberrypivcgencmd-python-library-access-raspberry-pi-vcgencmd-command","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/chewett.co.uk\/blog\/343\/raspberrypivcgencmd-python-library-access-raspberry-pi-vcgencmd-command\/","title":{"rendered":"RaspberryPiVcgencmd A python library to access Raspberry Pi vcgencmd command"},"content":{"rendered":"

To access some of the lower level aspects of the Raspberry Pi’s config you can use the built in command vcgencmd<\/code>. This is a useful on the command line but to easily access it in a program you need to parse the output.<\/p>\n

I am planning to use this command to store data like the temperature of the Raspberry Pi in python. Therefore to easily access the data I decided to make a small python module to do this.<\/p>\n

RaspberryPiVcgencmd Python Module<\/h2>\n

This python module is a wrapper around the vcgencmd<\/code> command to allow easy access to\u00a0some of the internal data of the Raspberry Pi.<\/p>\n

To include this module in your git based project you can run<\/p>\n

git submodule add https:\/\/github.com\/chewett\/RaspberryPiVcgencmd\r\ngit commit<\/pre>\n
Now\u00a0I have run the above command the library is installed as a git submodule. This means I can now use it in my python script.<\/p>\n
So that I can use the library in my current script I need to import the submodule. To import this module I can add the below import statement to my script.<\/p>\n
from RaspberryPiVcgencmd.RaspberryPiVcgencmd import RaspberryPiVcgencmd<\/pre>\n
This will make the RaspberryPiVcgencmd class available to be used in the current python file. Once I have imported it I can use the library to get the firmware version adding the below to the script.<\/p>\n
vcgencmd = RaspberryPiVcgencmd()\r\nprint vcgencmd.get_version()<\/pre>\n
Using the vcgencmd<\/code> object you can now call any of the functions available in the library.<\/p>\n
Full details of what vcgencmd can do is available on elinux<\/a>.<\/p>\n
Current exposed functions<\/h2>\n
The majority of the useful output from vcgencmd is exposed in the class with the below functions<\/p>\n