Monitor your Internet bandwidth with Raspberry Pi

Hardcore Internet users or those of us curious about the maximum data rates possible with our Internet connection are always interested in the bandwidth being used, and a neat way to monitor this in real-time has been documented by Darren Beck for use with a Raspberry Pi. 

For this to be possible your router needs to be enabled for SNMP, which allows the Raspberry Pi to run a simple python script which not only polls the router for the bandwidth data - but also creates a neat graphical representation for an inexpensive OLED display:

The Pi requires a direct connection to the router, however the OLED wiring is easy thanks to the I2C bus - only four wires are needed between the Pi and OLED. You can see a "real-time" demonstration of the display in the following video:

Kudos to Darren for not only an interesting but useful project that's easy to reproduce. To get started you can find more information from his Instructable page. 

And if you're interested in making your own version, PMD Way can help you with the parts, such as:

• 0.96" 128x64 pixel OLED display
• Raspberry Pi
• a range of Raspberry Pi enclosures
• and much more...