I am talking about a script roseway, linux based routers have bash awk, curl etc. as tools to collect and process stats. Crontab a built in function of linux is the linux version of task scheduler.
The limitation would be storage, so the log would have to be cycled/archived to keep space usage down and I would probably want to work with ronski or yourself to add support into the gui apps so those apps are a frontend with the router as a backend.
So e.g. the gui would connect to the router, ask for the stats and then display them. It could also possibly download the log from the router and generate graphs. The router would handle the automated 24/7 data collection as well as uploading the data to MDWS.
For someone like myself, adding extra devices isnt a solution, using my pc is adequate, but the preference is using the router which is entirely logical given its an always on low powered device anyway.
To give you an idea how capable linux based routers are?
My router currently does the following tasks.
1 - Selective routing on demand VPN endpoint.
2 - Downloads malware url's, tracker url's and adds the hostnames to my dns cache which is hosted by the router.
3 - I have a proxy on the router which the dns cache may forward requests to for filtering (abit like how IWF filtering works).
4 - QoS of my traffic both directions.
Linux based routers are also commonly used for purposes such as a torrent client, NAS and other types of network hub tasks.
I think you have massively under estimated the capability of a linux based router.
I can already think of personal advantages to myself.
e.g. when I watch games on nbc sports I set my clock to the eastern us time on my pc which upsets MDWS uploads, however if my router was handling those uploads, it would be a complete non issue.
I am motivated enough now I can probably have a script made to collect all the stats within an hour of work as well as log in the same format already used by bald eagle so the log would be compatible with the graph creator, the hard bit is the uploading of data and interfacing with a gui.
So the real barriers are really.
1 - Is tony ok with a script that can upload been open source? he may have reservations against that.
2 - Will yourself or ronski be ok with updating your gui's to work as a frontend (optional feature) against a linux cli lan based backend.