hud - server room on the taskbar

┌─[ status: live ]─[ type: monitoring ]─[ dependencies: 0 ]─[ admin panel opening: significantly less often ]─┐

hud — a small widget that sits in the corner of the desktop and shows live what your home server and GPU station are doing: CPU, RAM, temperatures, disks, network. Born out of pure laziness — I was tired of opening the admin panel every time I just wanted to check if any disk wasn't overheating.

one glance instead of three clicks and a login. the best dashboard is the one you don't have to open.

What it shows

• Server (NAS): CPU load and temperature, RAM, array utilization, plus the temperature and speed of each disk individually — including which one is currently spinning.
• GPU Station: CPU, RAM, and both graphics cards — temperature, load, memory usage.
• Live Status: online / offline. If the station is asleep — one button wakes it up, another puts it back to sleep.

Stack

On the server side sits a tiny pure Python agent (zero dependencies) that collects metrics and exposes them as JSON. Secrets stay on the server — the widget knows nothing it doesn't need to know. The widget itself is a lightweight window on Windows (tkinter) that queries the agent over the private network. Waking and sleeping the GPU station goes through Wake-on-LAN.

The little details that make a difference

• Always on top, but passes clicks through — doesn't obscure anything, doesn't steal focus, doesn't flicker on refresh.
• Tray icon to hide, sticks to the monitor you leave it on.
• Portable: one .exe file + config, so it lands on the next machine in a minute.

// PS: yes, I could have used ready-made Grafana. but then I'd have to maintain Grafana.