PiwnicaStyleDashboard

An animated PCB desktop layer with a system dashboard for Arch Linux (X11): faint circuit traces over your wallpaper, signal pulses running along them with a green afterglow, and terminal-style panels showing CPU, GPU, RAM, IOWait, network, system, physical disks and temperatures. It lives under your windows and above the wallpaper, lets every click through to the desktop, and keeps off the character on your wallpaper (holdout mask).

Screenshot rendered with piwnica-dashboard screenshot --demo (fake data), wallpaper from examples/orin.

Features

• Adapts to the machine by itself — nothing to configure for a typical setup:
  • monitor: the first portrait monitor gets the dashboard (else the primary one); the others get the traces only;
  • GPU: Intel (i915 / xe, engine load from DRM fdinfo like intel_gpu_top), AMD (amdgpu sysfs), NVIDIA (nvidia-smi), picking the card that drives a display;
  • network: the interface with the default route;
  • disks: real disks from lsblk (no loop/zram/removable), usage in % and GB, read/write rate;
  • temperatures with limits and colour zones: green = idle/light work, yellow = normal under load, red = close to the limit (not recommended for long periods). Limits come from the hardware (Intel TjMax, amdgpu temp*_crit, NVIDIA slowdown temp) or vendor specs (AMD CPUs 90 °C, Intel Arc 90 °C, NVMe min(70 °C, drive WCTEMP)), each overridable.
• Holdout: give it a PNG mask (alpha = character) and neither the animation, the tint nor the panels touch that area; the panels are placed in the free space around the character, or skipped if there is none.
• Cheap: only changed areas are repainted (~30 fps), rendered client-side so the X server only copies them; data is sampled once per second, slow sensors every 5 s. About 20 % of one CPU core for three monitors with the dashboard (plus ~4 % in Xorg). While a game runs (Steam/Proton, Lutris, Heroic/Wine, gamescope -- even windowed or alt-tabbed) or a fullscreen window has focus, the traces on the other monitors switch off and the dashboard keeps running, to watch the game's load (dashboard_in_games = false to stop it too).
• Click-through, in the "below" window layer: desktop icons and the desktop menu keep working.

Requirements

Arch Linux, an X11 session with a compositing window manager (XFCE: Window Manager Tweaks → Compositor; elsewhere e.g. picom). Wayland is not supported.

sudo pacman -S --needed python python-gobject python-cairo python-numpy gtk3 xorg-xprop ttf-jetbrains-mono

Install

User-local, no sudo:

git clone https://github.com/arikukaenbyou/PiwnicaStyleDashboard.git
cd PiwnicaStyleDashboard
./install.sh            # runs the tests, installs to ~/.local, autostarts on login, starts now
./install.sh --remove   # uninstall

System-wide package: cd packaging && makepkg -si (after a release tag exists).

Usage

piwnica-dashboard detect      # what was detected: monitors, holdouts, GPU, network, disks, sensors + limits
piwnica-dashboard run         # start (the autostart entry does this on login)
piwnica-dashboard screenshot --demo out.png --wallpaper wall.png --holdout holdout.png

Configuration: ~/.config/piwnica-dashboard/config.toml is written on first start with every value set to auto and commented. Set a monitor by connector name (monitor = "DP-1"), a holdout path, or a temperature limit (cpu_limit = 95) when the automatic guess is wrong.

Holdout mask

A PNG with exactly the monitor's size; alpha > 0 where the character is (a soft, blurred edge looks best). With path = "auto" (default) it is looked up as holdout-<W>x<H>.png next to the monitor's XFCE wallpaper, so keeping the wallpaper and its mask in one folder is enough. See examples/orin/ for a pair.

Tests

python -m unittest discover -s tests -t .

The collectors are tested on fake /proc and /sys trees (Intel i915/xe, AMD, NVIDIA, Intel and AMD CPUs, NVMe, Super I/O), plus monitor choice, config, panel layout around the example character and the rendered frame (nothing is drawn over the character). CI runs them in an Arch Linux container.

Licence

MIT, see LICENSE. The example wallpaper has its own note in examples/orin.

---

Po polsku

PiwnicaStyleDashboard to animowana warstwa pulpitu dla Arch Linuksa (X11). Na tapecie rysuje ścieżki płytki drukowanej z impulsami i zielonym afterglow, a do tego panele w stylu terminala: CPU, GPU, RAM, IOWait, sieć, system, dyski fizyczne (% i GB) oraz temperatury. Warstwa leży pod oknami, przepuszcza kliknięcia i omija postać na tapecie (maska holdout).

• Sama się dopasowuje: dashboard trafia na pierwszy pionowy monitor, GPU Intel, AMD i NVIDIA są rozpoznawane automatycznie, sieć to interfejs z trasą domyślną, dyski to fizyczne dyski z lsblk.
• Temperatury z progami: zielony to spoczynek, żółty to norma pod obciążeniem, czerwony to blisko limitu. Limity pochodzą ze sprzętu albo ze specyfikacji producenta i można je nadpisać w configu.
• Instalacja: ./install.sh bez sudo (zależności wypisze do sudo pacman -S …). Diagnostyka: piwnica-dashboard detect. Konfiguracja: ~/.config/piwnica-dashboard/config.toml.
• Gry: gdy działa gra (Steam/Proton, Lutris, Heroic/Wine, gamescope), także w oknie i po Alt+Tab, animacja na pozostałych monitorach się wyłącza, a dashboard działa dalej (dashboard_in_games = false, żeby też gasł).
• Maska postaci: PNG w rozmiarze monitora, gdzie alfa > 0 oznacza postać. Plik holdout-<szer>x<wys>.png obok tapety XFCE jest wykrywany sam. Przykład jest w examples/orin/.