hexicon 0.1.0

Visual fingerprints for network addresses — lossless, bit-accurate identicons for IPv6, IPv4, and MAC addresses.

Hexicon

Visual fingerprints for network addresses.

A terminal-first tool to turn IPv6, IPv4, and MAC addresses into bit-accurate, lossless, human-readable visual patterns. Visualize structured binary data in the terminal without losing bit order or structure. Or identicons, but for network addresses.

Why?

Network addresses are hard to compare at a glance. Hexicon lets you compare addresses in logs visually, get an intuitive feel for address distribution, and simplify debugging. Or just create pixel art to represent your addresses.

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Features

• Supports IPv6, IPv4, and MAC addresses
• Bit-accurate rendering. No hashing, no data loss
• Semantic structure (network/host, OUI/NIC, octets)
• Terminal-friendly block rendering with multiple layouts: grid, split, inline, barcode
• JSON output for programmatic use
• Zero dependencies. Python stdlib only

Installation

pip install hexicon

How it works

Hexicon converts addresses into bit-accurate patterns through a deterministic, lossless pipeline. No hashing.

Addresses are normalised to their canonical form, converted to a bitstream, grouped into scanlines of width bits, paired as adjacent scanlines (top/bottom), and mapped to half-block characters. Each cell (half a block) represents a single bit.

Usage

CLI

hexicon 2001:db8::1

hexicon --random

hexicon --random --type ipv6 --layout barcode --show-bits --output text

# Read from stdin
echo "::1" | hexicon -

Python API

from hexicon import render_address, addr_to_nibbles

# Render an address to text
print(render_address("2001:db8::1"))

# Get structured data
schema = addr_to_nibbles("2001:db8::1")
print(schema.type)   # "ipv6"
print(schema.parts)  # [Part(name="net", ...), Part(name="host", ...)]

# JSON output
print(render_address("::1", output="json"))

Options

Flag	Values	Default	Description
--type	auto, ipv6, ipv4, mac	auto	Address type
--layout	auto, grid, split, inline, barcode	auto	Layout mode
--width	N or auto	auto	Bits per scanline row
--scale	N	1	Vertical scaling factor
--invert	flag	—	Invert filled/empty pixels
--output	text, json	text	Output format
--random	flag	—	Generate a random address
--show-bits	flag	—	Debug: print bit values
--no-newline	flag	—	Suppress trailing newline

Layouts

Split

Default view. Semantic separation of address parts. For IPv6: network │ host. For MAC: OUI │ NIC.

Grid

Vertical stacked version of split view.

Inline

Single 1-height continuous strip. Good for logs or embedding.

Barcode

Compact 2-height view.

JSON Output

Returns a JSON object with the following fields:

{
  "type": "ipv6",
  "address": "2001:db8::1",
  "parts": [
    {
      "name": "net",
      "rows": ["▀ ▀▄", "..."],
      "bit_range": [0, 64],
      "label": "network"
    }
  ]
}

License

MIT