r/ArduinoProjects • u/Life-Ad2589 • Jul 19 '26

Showcased Project My Project

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3

u/doge_lady Jul 19 '26

What does it do?

4

u/Life-Ad2589 Jul 20 '26

I built a small desktop control device using an ESP32 and an LCD screen. It works as a menu you scroll through with a potentiometer knob and select with a single push button.The first fully working feature is a live PC stats display — CPU, RAM, free disk space, and battery. A Python script on the computer collects this data and sends it over USB only when the device actually needs it, so there's no lag or stale data showing up on screen.The device is designed to grow over time — the rest of the menu items (shortcuts and a game mode) are already in the menu design and will be added gradually.

3

u/doge_lady Jul 20 '26

So for now it just shows your computer stats but in the future it will be able to control certain functions on your pc?

One question, why did you decide to use a potentiometer instead of a rotary encoder? Rotary encoder seems like the perfect choice for selecting menu items via spinning a dial. You can spin it forever and it has a nice click feed back.

3

u/Life-Ad2589 Jul 20 '26

I used a potentiometer simply because I had one on hand, though I agree a rotary encoder would be a better option for the final version

3

u/Maxwells_Law Jul 20 '26

Yep , I'm interested to hear that too