[Matplotlib-users] Plotting logging data with dates

[Kipton Moravec]

I am new and have been reading and playing with the tutorials.  I have 
not seen what I need to do.

I am collecting data on some machines every second. I collect 
temperature, input voltage, and percentage of the time on. It is two 
machines (for time on),  4-8 temperatures, and 4 voltages.

it comes to me as a csv file or line, with Date, time, and then all the 
values comma separated.

I can rearrange the data to however Matplotlib requires in Python. That 
is not the issue.

I do not know how to plot the date/time x-axis.

The user wants to look at the past hour, past day, past week, past 
month, and past year.

For the plot of the last hour I need a line and the time every 10 
minutes on the x axis.

For the plot of the day, probably a vertical line every hour and a label 
every 3 hours.

For the plot of the week, a line at midnight, and a day label between 
the lines.

For the plot of the month, I do not know what might work.

For the plot of the year, a line between the month and the month between 
the lines.

I want all the data (or a good portion of it) between the axis markers.

How do I do this, or find examples or documentation on how to work with 
time and dates for the x-axis?

I found 
https://blog.mafr.de/2012/03/11/time-series-data-with-matplotlib/ which 
helped me a lot. I did not know about strpdate2num.  But I think I need 
a date&time equivalent. Is there such a thing? Where would I find it? Or 
do I have to make it?

I had a friend suggest going with MRTG because it produces the graphs 
clost to what I want. That looked harder.

People log data by time and date and graph it all the time. Something 
like this has got to have been done before.

Kip