With the demands of modern computing, from video editing, streaming, and gaming, many of us will turn to a monitoring system of some point to keep tabs on CPU usage, temperatures, memory, and other physical states of our machines. Most are going to simply display on the screen but this data can be sent to external CPU monitors as well. This retro-styled monitor built on analog voltmeters does a great job of this and adds some flair to a modern workstation as well.
The build, known as bbMonitor, is based on the ESP32 platform which controls an array of voltmeters via PWM. The voltmeters have been modified with a percentage display to show things like CPU use percentage. Software running on the computers sends this data in real time to the ESP32 so the computer’s behavior can be viewed at a glance. Each voltmeter is also augmented with RGB LEDs that change color from green to red as use increases as well. The project’s creator, [Corebb], also notes that the gauges will bounce around if the computer is under heavy load but act more linearly when under constant load, also helping to keep an eye on computer status.
While the build does seem to rely on a Windows machine to run the software for export to the monitor, all of the code is open-sourced and available on the project’s GitHub page and could potentially be adapted for other operating systems. And, as far as the voltmeters themselves go, there have been similar projects in the past that use stepper motors as a CPU usage monitor instead.
Very similar to:
https://hackaday.com/2023/12/04/mini-meters-monitor-microprocessor-maximization/
I first started reading this I was confused. Didn’t I read this already? Thank you for providing the link I was going to have to go searching for.
The Krell would approve!
Am I crazy to thinkI could just put an ammeter in the CPU power feed? Must try it now 🤣. Conveniently cars used to use a 30A generator with an ammeter, should work a treat.
Yes you could.
But the interesting question is, how to define what is 100% – the CPU power draw depends on what exactly you’re doing with it.
Your car has a generator?
Mine has an alternator.
i did this forever and ever ago using a pic to drive the meters and lcdsmartie to output cpu and memory usage to the serial port. good times.
Nice project. I used the more industral looking ones in the past to show Up and Downlink speeds.
See https://github.com/kiu/netmeter