Engineer shows off unique retro monitoring for Windows Task Manager

An engineer and YouTuber has created an array of physical analog dials to replace the functions of Task Manager.

When your PC is running slow, or your fans are howling for no reason, many power users will press Ctrl+Alt+Del or right-click the taskbar to pull up Task Manager to check on what is hogging all your PC resources.

Engineer and YouTuber Lex of Computing: the Details decided that Task Manager just wasn’t the aesthetic they wanted, so they decided to go a bit dieselpunk by creating an array of physical analog dials for performance monitoring.

To create a comprehensive monitoring system for the CPU, Lex set up 12 analog dials, one representing the load of each core. Two additional dials were also added to the array, signifying memory usage and swap space.

Colored LEDs are also embedded within the dial, changing color from green to amber to red to show the current load at a glance. A custom backplate for each dial has been created, with a usage scale and text indicating what each dial is monitoring.

A sci-fi performance monitoring setup

The array of dials is all controlled using an Arduino Mega with PWM. The Arduino is a similar type of board to the Raspberry Pi.

It also handles the LED signals, all individually addressable strips placed underneath each dial to give off a pleasing glow. This is all housed within a custom frame created using a laser cutter and snapped together using tabs and cut-outs for simple assembly and stability.

The result looks like something from a 1960s science fiction show, or perhaps the sort of thing you might expect to see in the depths of an old submarine or warship. As well as looking cool, the set-up is functional.

Lex wrote a simple program using the programming language Rust that accesses the “systemstat” data from Linux, and then performs some mathematics to convert the data into something that the Arduino can process before sending it over a USB connection.

Though a full parts list or tutorial has not been made available, Lex says the process was surprisingly simple, but says they have no plans on releasing the code at present.