System Monitor with LCD Display

A real-time system monitoring solution that displays system metrics, battery status, and system information on an LCD screen through serial communication. The project consists of an Arduino-based client that controls the LCD display and a Rust-based server that collects system information.

Components

Hardware Requirements

• Arduino board (or compatible microcontroller)
• I2C LCD Display (16x2 characters)
• USB connection to your PC

Program Components

• Arduino client program (./client)
• Rust server application (./server)

Features

• CPU
  • Usage
  • Percentage
• RAM usage
• Swap usage
• GPU (Nvidia only) *
  • Usage
  • Temperature
  • Memory usage
• Battery information *
  • Charging status
  • Battery percentage
• Network upload and download rate
• Now playing music information *
  • Playing/paused
  • Author
  • Song title

(*) Information will only be shown if available

Dependencies

Arduino

• Wire (built-in)
• LiquidCrystal_I2C (1.1.2)

Rust

See server/Cargo.toml

Installation

Arduino Client Setup

1. Install arduino-cli
2. Navigate to client
3. Install the required libraries with arduino-cli (user-wide):

   make install-libs

4. Connect the I2C LCD display to your Arduino. The code is intended to be ran with a 16x2 display.
5. Compile client/client.ino and upload it to your board:

   make port=<port> board=<board>

   The arguments are directly passed to arduino-cli, hence the board parameter syntax is the same you'd expect when using arduino-cli. Example use: make port=/dev/ttyUSB0 board=arduino:avr:nano.

Rust Server Setup

1. Install cargo
2. Navigate to server
3. Build the program:

   cargo build --release

Rust Server Execution

Execute the program:

cargo run --release

The program will try to detect automatically the client device. It will connect to the first device found that has the Arduino vendor ID (0x0403). If none are found, it will connect to the first USB device found. If you want to bind the program to a certain device append it to the end of the command. Nevertheless, I don't recommend doing it on Linux as the Arduino might be recognised as another device when it is connected a second time.

Server Autostart With Systemd (Optional)

Execute server/autostart-systemd.sh to make the program start automatically on login

Uninstallation

Arduino Client Dependencies Removal

Uninstall the libraries if you don't need them (user-wide):

make uninstall-libs

Rust Server Autostart Removal

You only need to do this if you followed this step before.

systemctl disable --now lcd-system-monitor.service