PC Meter Download & More

Intro | Building the Device | Arduino Code | Desktop Application | Download & More

Download

Click here to download everything in a ZIP file. It has several folders, as follows:

• arduino - contains the Arduino code
• meter face - contains the Inkskape file and PNG exports for the meter faces
• PcMeter - The Windows application compiled and ready to use
• PcMeterSln - Source code for the Windows application developed in Visual Studio 2010.

Credits / External Links

The idea for this project and the information needed to complete it (and some code) came from several sources, including:

• Show pc stats on analog gauges – great article with lots of info on interfacing with analog gauges.  It’s based on a PIC microcontroller, but much of the info applies regardless of the microcontroller used.  It uses the LCD Smartie application to send data over the serial port to the microcontroller.  I considered doing this myself before writing my own application. However, development on LCD Smartie appears to have stalled which concerned me, and I wanted to try out the PerformanceCounter class anyways.
• Arduino Analog Gauge – Project that drives meters based on PC stats using an Arduino microcontroller.  It is based on the previously mentioned article and also uses LCD Smartie.
• Arduino: Showing CPU load with 9 LEDs! – This project uses LEDs to display CPU load rather than a meter, but it uses a C#.Net application to drive the meter, which I referred to as I learned to do it myself.
• GetPerformanceInfo by Antonio Bakula – this is the code I use to get the memory stats. See this stack overflow post as well.
• Michael Sorens' excellent guide and framework for creating system tray applications in C# was crucial to version 2.0 of my application.

Since building this project, I've heard from others who've made their own, some using code/ideas that I developed. I love hearing about it, so let me know if you have! Here's a couple I know of:

• mnedix created a really cool nixie tube CPU/memory indicator that runs off the desktop application I wrote. Very cool!
• Hayden Thring created a PC meter and rewrote my Arduino code, making several improvements that inspired version 2 of my program.

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Originally posted 3/22/2018; Last updated 5/8/2018