About crypto-x

A simple script for including the price of crypto-currencies in your Gnu/Linux XFCE panel.

Why I created this script

I created this script because I found it difficult (and oftentimes irritating) to find a script that integrates a simple crypto price monitor into the panel for the GNU/Linux XFCE desktop environment and the associated XCFE panel. There are a plentiful supply of crypto monitors for tiling window managers on Github but not many for gui desktop environments. This project attempts to remedy that.

Dependencies Required

Crypto-x requires the following dependencies to function properly:

• Client URL (Curl) to query the currency data source (rate.sx)

Script Configuration

Since crypto-x is a simple bash script there isn't much configuration that can be done or is needed for that matter. However, for those users that choose to make changes to accommodate their particular use case, there are three easy modifications that can be made as outlined below.

!REMEMBER! - You must make the script executable before it will work. If you don't do this the script will not work. Use chmod +x to accomplish this. See below. You can name the sript whatever name you would like, I used "coin_monitor" as the name.

chmod +x coin_monitor.sh

Modification #1 - Coin

One modification that is particularly easy to make is changing the coin you would like to track/monitor. By default bitcoin is used, however, this can be changed easily by changing the script variable "coin_val" to a coin of your choosing by replacing "BTC" with a coin denoted below (or other). The only caveat is the coin needs to be in the population of crypto tracked by the Rate.sx project. Below are the most popular coin options available:

• Bitcoin (BTC)
• Bitcoin Cash (BCH)
• Bitcoin SV (BSV) - fork of BCH
• Ethereum (ETH)
• Tether (USDT)
• Ripple (XRP)
• Chainlink (LINK)
• Binance Coin (BNB)
• Litecoin (LTC)
• Polkadot (DOT)

Modification #2 - Coin Amount

A second modification that can be made without too much trouble is changing the amount of coin you would like to track. This could be benefificial for example if you have a batch (>1) of one particular coin you are tracking (e.g. 100 BTC's). By default, 1 BTC is used for ease of monitoring and consistency to price reporting in the media. To modify the coin amount, the user simply changes the "1" within the btc_val variable to an amount of their choosing. In the example below, I changed the amount from 1 to 25,000.

Example:

coin_val="$(curl -s "rate.sx/25000BTC")"

Modification #3 - Decimal Formatting

The third modification that can be made is the format of the coin amount. By default, the script displays the coin amount to the nearest whole number (e.g. 13,900.51 is rounded to 13,901). If you would like to track the coin in a format that does not display to the nearest whole amount, you can modify the "printf" statement in the script. In the example below, I change the ETH price to display two decimal places.

Example:

coin_val="$(curl -s "rate.sx/1ETH")"
printf "%.2f\n" $coin_val

XFCE Panel Modifications

Crypto-x can be run on any desktop environment or tiling window manager as a shell script with output diplaying in a terminal. This section attempts to take advantage of a particular feature of the XFCE desktop environment panel named Generic Monitor. With the Generic Monitor the XFCE panel user can easily display the coin price using the crypto-x script.

To add the generic monitor to the panel and integrate the crypto-x script follow these steps:

• Step 1 - Right click on the XFCE Panel, scroll to Panel/Add New Items
• Step 2 - Scroll to or Search for "Generic Monitor", click "+Add"
• Step 3 - Find the generic monitor in the panel (usually all the way to the right), right click on it and click "Properties".
• Step 4 - Find the Command Lable and type in the location of executable script (e.g. /home/gnubytes/.scripts/coin_monitor.sh)
• Step 5 - Check "Label" and put in a descriptive word to identify the coin in the panel (e.g. "BTC:")
• Step 6 - Adjust the refresh interval (in seconds). I set this interval to 5 minutes (300 seconds) so it's not constantly using up computing resources.
• Step 7 - Make any formatting adjustments by clicking the large button at the bottom. There you can change fonts, sizes, etc. Feel free to experiment here for consistency with your themes, fonts, etc.
• Step 8 - Click Close

Credits

Much credit to Igor Chubin (https://github.com/chubin) for the fantastic Rate.sx project (https://github.com/chubin/rate.sx). Rate.sx serves as the source of cryptocurrency pricing information for crypto-x.