Monitor your PC/Laptop sensors with OHMARDNEX

Open Hardware Monitor with Arduino and Nextion

Welcome to my little side project!

We're going to make a simple hardware and sensor monitoring tool that looks great as a built-in piece of hardware or as a gadget on your desktop!

Working principle:

Read the data from your Laptop/PC -> send it to an Arduino that simply forwards it to a Nextion display!

Good to know before starting:

1. The core app is based on Open Hardware Monitor - it needs admin rights to read some temps and info

2. The Arduino acts only as a serial data forwarder to the display

• it can be connected via USB
• directly to the motherboard USB pins

3. It works with the 2 famous displays: Itead's [Nextion](https://nextion.tech/enhanced-series-introduction/) and it's original Chinese equivalent of TJC

• currently the user interface is created for the following 2 models: NX4832K035_011, TJC4832K035_011

Naming convention:

• NX - Nextion
• 4832 - 480 x 320 resolution
• K - ENHANCED family
• 035 - 3, 5inch screen size

Page layout / Features:

Status1:

• CPU temp/load
• GPU temp/load
• RAM usage
• GPU RAM usage

Status2:

• HDD1 name/used space
• HDD2 name/used space
• GPU fan usage/RPM
• CPU Power consumption

Graph:

• CPU & GPU temp - long-term representation

Settings:

• Show/Hide either the CPU or GPU temp
• Colorize CPU temp based on it's values
• Change GPU color to a custom color

Info

• Minimal info about the motherboard, CPU, GPU, HDD1, HDD2, RAM

Settings

• Manually change the display's brightness
• Change when the display goes to sleep
• Restart the display
• Show time and date

Other features:

• The executable requires admin priviledges, as the Open Hardware Monitor library needs to read the sensor data (don't worry about that) :)
• The display turns off after 1min, if it doesn't receive data
• To manually turn off the display, just press "Lock" on the main page
• Only 2 storage units are handled, it should be enough
• Send custom commands to the display (ex. sleep=1)

How to get started:

1. Flash the Arduino with SimpleSerialReader.ino

2. Flash the precompiled *.tft file for your display

3. Print the display bracket

4. Connect the display to the Arduino: 5V to 5V, GND to GND, RX is pin 12, TX is pin 11

5. Run the executable

• Select the correct COM port
• Select baud rate (usually 115200)
• Choose update rate - works fine with 2000msec

Want to contribute?

Check out the resources and the project folder on my Github page! Here are some tips for future improvements:

[x] Feature to minimize the app to the taskbar
[x] Feature to select which data has to be sent to the display
[x] Send custom commands to the display
[ ] Add autostart with Windows! - I just started C#, the app can be improved in many ways
[ ] Create different themes for the user interface - the display can have many themes, so it matches your surroundings!
[ ] Extend the functionality - other external libraries can be included - such as fan control or RGB light control!