My new project, is a simple led-strip which shows CPU load. 9 led’s are used for this, could have used more but my tiny breadboard couldn’t hold more. Anyhow, it uses serial communication to receive how much the totalcpu usage is. For this you need a C# program running on your computer, it just sends a value from 0-100. And the Arduino reacts and lights up leds accordingly to how much load your CPU got.

I will not go into how you make the program in C#, therefore I’m uploading the .exe here for you to download. I’ll also include the source-code for it.

What you need?

1x Arduino
9x LEDs
Some wires

1. Wire it all up like in this Fritzing picture.

2. Load up the Arduino with the following program.

3. Download the C# program here.

When you start the .exe file, you only need to select which Com port the Arduino is using. And the click connect, and then it should start communicating with the Arduino. And show cpu load.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecbdUhiOWes&w=425&h=344]

PS. If you got any questions etc, please take it in my forums post here.