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...