Specifically, I want to periodically (every half a second or so) read the contents of /sys/class/net/wlan0/wireless/link into pd for the purpose of creating a sort of auditory signal meter to assist with antenna adjustment. I've only used pd for very simple things in the past and am still pretty much a noob, but I really didn't think this would be difficult. After reading the Help for 'textfile' and some of the zexy derivatives, however, I was still unable to make this work. Are absolute paths not allowed? I can understand why this would be the case, but I was unable to make this work via links or any other workaround, and can't seem to make much use of the file reading objects at all. Piping the numbers to pd via an external 'watch' command or similar would work, if there's a way to do that? It looks like there's no such thing as a 'stdin' object... if anybody has any experience with this and can toss me some hints, it would be greatly appreciated. I can't believe nobody's tried to do this before... :)