Wireless Pico PC Sensor Monitor with power consumption calculator using Raspberry Pi Pico W. It does not require a wired connection to your PC. For the more detailed guide you can visit article on Medium.
- Raspberry Pi Pico W
- 1.14 inch LCD screen panel or any other compatible panel with ST7789 and 240x135 resolution
- Install Open Hardware Monitor;
- Enable Open Hardware Monitor internal web server, enable it to start minimized at tray on Windows startup;
- Bind the current or desired IP for your PC in your router;
- Enable port in your Windows firewall (8085 by default);
- Connect Pi Pico to your PC and Install Micropython;
- Clone this project to the local directory;
- Edit the following lines in config.py to get it started:
- line 2: change the IP:Port string to the one you have at step [2] of Prerequisites;
- lines 6,8: your Wi-Fi credentials;
- line 11: your local electricity cost per kWh in any currency;
- there are some more parameters to finetune from this file.
- Copy all the files to Pi Pico using Rshell, ThonyIDE, etc.
- Restart Pi Pico
- The green text shows the installed devices wattage on the left, current temperatures on the right. The color will change when the values are increasing from green to red;
-The large magenta text at the bottom half of the screen is the current total wattage;
-The framed small magenta text in the middle right:
- $$/h: the cost of energy per hour with the current system load;
- Total $: the accumulated cost for the electricity spent for the current session;
- (Optionally) It is possible to change brightness of the screen with A and B hardware buttons if you have the ones.
- Normally, on the device start you will see Wi-Fi connection progress text on the LCD screen and then the UI. If not, update the configurations and re-upload one more time.
- The device will try to connect to the router and then to the PC companion app at every start.
- Sometimes it takes time (10-120) seconds to connect to router.
- If the PC is offline, the device will wait for it, and you will see zeroes as the current consumption values. So the PC could be restarted randomly, and the values will be accumulated properly for the current session.