System Monitoring on Raspberry Pi Using vtop

vtop is a free and open-source powerful command-line monitoring tool made with Node.js. This tool allows user to monitor CPU usage as well as memory across multi-process applications. vtop utilizes unique “Unicode characters” to draw and display spikes chart according to CPU and Memory usage.

If you are a Raspberry Pi user and want to install vtop then this article is going to be a beneficial for you.

System Monitoring on Raspberry Pi Using vtop

You can install vtop on Raspberry Pi using following steps:

Step 1: Update Raspberry Pi Repository

Before installation of vtop, first install updates on Raspberry Pi with the below-given command.

$ sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Step 2: Install Node.js

Next, you have to install Node.js on Raspberry Pi with below-given command:

$ sudo apt install nodejs

Confirm installation of Node.js and NPM using the following commands:

$ node --version

$ npm --version

Step 3: Install vtop Using NPM

After the installation of Node.js and NPM, you can install vtop on Raspberry Pi by running the below-given command:

$ sudo npm install -g vtop

Run vtop on Raspberry Pi

To run vtop in the terminal, simply use the “vtop” command to view the current consumption of memory and CPU in the form of spikes, as shown in below image.

$ vtop

If user would like to display all information within specific time frame, then vtop command can be used in following way:

$ vtop --quit-after <timeframe>

The above command will only display information of CPU and memory usage for only 10-Seconds, then it will quit immediately.

Change Themes on vtop

Users can change the theme layout for vtop according to their own choice. Theme interface can be decided by different commands.

$ vtop -t <theme command>

Or:

$ vtop -theme <theme command>

Below table elaborates changing the theme color according through different commands.

Command	Theme Color
acid	Light green
becca	Violet
Brew	Light Blue
dark	Dark and green
monokai	Pink and Blue
parallax	Light Violet
seti	Dark and light blue
wizard	Orange

Uninstall vtop From Raspberry Pi

To uninstall vtop from Raspberry Pi, follow the below-given command:

$ sudo npm uninstall -g vtop

Conclusion

Monitoring activity for CPU and RAM is beneficial if multiple operations being performed on the Raspberry Pi device. This would let the users to kill undesired programs and delete unnecessary files. The information about these system activities can easily be achieved by installing vtop tool on the Raspberry Pi device through NPM. The users can also change themes according to their choice using the “vtop -t” command with the theme name already provided in the table above.

System Monitoring on Raspberry Pi Using vtop