Hi everyone,
I wanted to share a small module I've built: a WakaTime integration for Ignition Designer. If you already use WakaTime to track your coding activity across editors and IDEs, this extends that tracking into Designer sessions.
What's WakaTime?
WakaTime is an automatic time-tracking and analytics tool for developers. It runs as a lightweight plugin inside your editors and IDEs (VS Code, IntelliJ, Vim, Sublime, and dozens of others) and silently logs how much time you spend coding — broken down by project, language, file, and branch.
Instead of manually starting/stopping a timer, WakaTime just watches your keystrokes and file activity in the background, then syncs the data to your WakaTime dashboard where you get:
- Daily/weekly/monthly coding time breakdowns
- Language and project splits (e.g., "60% Ignition, 25% Python, 15% Java this week")
- Editor/OS breakdowns across all your machines
- Streaks, goals, and leaderboards if you're into that
- A public profile badge you can drop in a GitHub README
It's popular for personal productivity insights, but also for teams wanting a rough sense of where engineering time actually goes.
Example:
You can find me here: César Román (@cesarcoatl) - WakaTime
Why this matters for Ignition?
Ignition Designer isn't a typical IDE with a plugin ecosystem WakaTime already supports. So until now, any time invested in the Ignition Designer was invisible to WakaTime. This module closes that gap by having Designer itself report activity directly to the WakaTime API, so your Ignition work finally shows up next to your VS Code and IntelliJ time.
How it works:
The module is written in Java and talks directly to the WakaTime REST API, pulling OS/platform details from the JVM's system properties. No external agent, plugin, or background process required. Install the module, drop in your API key, and it just works.
Details:
- Version: 0.0.1 (early release)
- Compatibility: Ignition 8.3
- Repo / Downloads: Releases · ignition-devs/ignition-wakatime · GitHub
Installation:
- Download the
Ignition-WakaTime.modlfile from the Releases page above. - In the Gateway web UI: Config → Modules → Install or Upgrade a Module, select the file, and install. Restart the Gateway if prompted.
- Grab your API key from your WakaTime account settings, The Designer reads the API key from
~/.wakatime.propertieson startup. The contents of the file should be something like this:wakatime.api.key=waka_d569d07b-7585-427d-ae4b-6d983d01e806 - Open Designer and your activity should start reporting to WakaTime automatically.
This was built using the ignition-module-starter Claude skill that @KathyApplebaum shared here on the forum. It made scaffolding the module setup a lot easier, so thanks for that.
This is a first release, so I'd love feedback, bug reports, or feature requests. Feel free to open an issue on GitHub or reply here.