Finding hwmon sensor information

I don’t know a really simple way to get the device id’s for the devices on my system that can be read (by conky for instance). The method I use is open a terminal and cd to /sys/class/hwmon and then see what is there, usually there will be one or more directories named hwmon(x) where x is a number from 0 upwards.

I first enter the directory hwmon0 and look for files ending in _input sometimes there will be a file that starts the same (ie temp1) but ends with _label this will contain some text describing the sensor (ie Core 0) and will help to identify the device although this is not always there and some investigation might be required.

Often you can use the information from sensors to determine the device by comparing the values.

I create a simple list of each hwmon(x) device and the _input files it contains like the one below :-

hwmon0
  fan1
  fan2
  fan3
  fan4
  in1
  in2
  in3
  in4
  in5
  in6
  in7
  in8
  temp1
  temp2
  temp3

hwmon1
  temp1
  temp2

From this list I will be able to call all these values (as required) from my conky using the command

${hwmon 0 in 8}

so using this command you can display the reading from hardware device 0 of the type in listed as 8, which in my case is the voltage of my motherboard battery (for bios retention).

I hope this will help you get better system information from your machine and if there is anything that is not clear (or could be made better) please leave me a comment.