MAINFRAME COMPUTE OBSERVATOR

I wanted to get the PCB populated today but turns out I have a few missing bits in my parts bin, parts are on order now. 

But hopefully I can power this up and start testing and configurating the display...

Then I can get on with the working prototype software :)

I also tried to use some old rejuvenated solder paste....... didnt work out so well D:  Good thing PCB orders are in a minimum of 5, so I have spare! 

Here's a first look at the widget design I'm going with for the hardware monitor.

This is behind done in greyscale to save storage space on the hardware, but also ram space.

I will later be colorizing them in software, and I will probably be going with a old yellow CRT look for that retro futurism look. 

Ok so over the last couple of days Ive also been getting my etch on! 

First time Ive really done some proper etching with my laser cutter. So theres been some experimentation and some minor failings...

I did in fact make a test etch block to figure out what speeds and power levels to use...

But even though I made this, when I went to etch my parts things didnt quite match the test levels... 

To begin with the etch level was too low, so i decided to run it again, even though I did clamp the part down, it seems not well enough and there was some shifting...

In the end though, I ended up redoing it and I got some pretty decent results. 

This last picture is just a test fitting. And all looks good. These acrylic parts will also get some side lighting, and each layer will be individually lit. 

So I started conceptualising this project a while ago. Wanting to build something nice for the new PC I was putting together.

I knew that the hardware itself would be pretty simple as I was going to use the same micro processor and display chip combination as I did in my tricorder project.

But I wanted this to be a little special and a little unique to me. So I rushed together a PCB design, 

And got it placed with in the CAD model I had drawn up to fit the  PC case I have. 

While I was waiting for the PCBs, I started getting to grips with C# and Windows Forms within Visual Studio (which is now amazingly free)

From there I started figuring out how to manipulate the form objects such as the chart system to work to build Fan curves and other UI objects.

While these are mainly for phase 2 I wanted to get a good understanding of how to make this side of things work.

I will be using the LibreHardwareMonitor API to gather all the data, from there I will need to work out how to package my data and send it to the micro controller to display. ( https://github.com/LibreHardwareMonitor )

These are challenges I will still have to figure out.

The hardware will be connected via an internal USB header. But I'm still not fully sure how to handle generic USB HID data at the moment. So for the early prototype I might just go with a virtual com port and dish out simple framed serial write packets. 

But that's something to decide over the next couple of weeks...