Building a Simple and User Friendly System Information Monitor

[Flatt]

Hello, LTT Forums!

 

I am a computer science student and I wish to create a desktop widget that displays information pertaining to your system, like Hardware Info but in a more user friendly way. I am aware of that AzureAI plugin widget, but I find that it doesn't always function that well. I also know that you can just see all this in task manager too, but I want something that can sit on my desktop and show me all the info I want in an easy to read manner.

Either way, before I get to actually making it, I was wondering, if I were to release this somewhere, what kind of features people would like to see! Since my intention is to make it for Windows desktop computers, I figured I'd share my thoughts here.

 

I don't know how long this project will end up taking me, though, as I am basically just starting out in learning coding. I may end up posting updates on this project both here, and on Reddit for feedback.

 

The attached image is everything I have thought of so far, with the exception of network utilization. The yellow text is the features I can think of. The point of this project is for this app/widget to be light weight and extremely user friendly for those who don't know that much about computers, but still want to monitor its health easily.

Obviously, this is no where close to the final product. I'm also planning on adding little start-up animations for fun.

 

It will probably end up being open source and on GitHub.

 

Feedback and feature suggestions are much appreciated! (Apologies for my bad hand-writing.)

[undergroundbeef]

I always think of Rainmeter for this, but haven't used Windows as a daily driver in well over a decade, so I'm not sure if it's still as popular as it once was... or if it became too heavy/bloated as a desktop customization tool, rather than just system monitors. It appears to be open source, if you're looking for some certain things could be done while you're learning.

 

I'm probably not your target market, so I don't have a lot of suggestions, but wish you luck. I'm sure you'll learn a lot in the process.

[Franck]

This is a weird way to display. It's mostly just for AMD processors single socket. For intel single socket you would need 3 processors graph, 1 for boost 3.0 P core, 1 for the other P core and 1 for the E cores. A list is much better. I specially run lots of heavy duty multithreaded code and knowing which core boost at what is very important to know where i can squeeze out performance.

[Helly]

On 3/18/2024 at 12:16 PM, Franck said:

A list is much better.

I agree with this. If you want to see info you want to see what core is doing what. The only clear way to do that is to show a list.

 

Before you try to create any of this though, think hard and long about where to get the info from. AFAIK HWInfo is NOT an option anymore, to get the info from that requires the memory sharing option thingy that has been locked behind a paywall. You don't want to create something that users will have to buy a separate program for to actually use.

You can look into Rainmeter as mentioned before. That has all the capabilities you seem to want, you would just need to find a source for the info you want to display. Or decide to build something yourself.

 

Good luck!

[Flatt]

On 3/18/2024 at 7:16 AM, Franck said:

A list is much better.

I agree, a list is a lot better. I've been using HWiNFO for a while but its a lot of information to look at. I mainly wanted to build this program as a more user friendly/for beginners look into hardware info. It's not really for advanced users, I guess. Maybe this was the wrong place to ask for advice lol 

[Flatt]

On 3/20/2024 at 7:40 AM, Helly said:

Before you try to create any of this though, think hard and long about where to get the info from.

NuGet Gallery has tons of OpenHardwareInfo libraries available for several languages. Either way, I'm still trying to learn how this all works. I can't even get it to work correctly in a command prompt window yet.