Creating a Custom PC Sensor Panel/Hardware Monitor Without AIDA64 (Using free software)

[@superfriedhelm8252]

wonderful video, and nice explanations. But at this point in time it isn't possible to have it working 24/7 since HWiNFO added a Pro version in March 2021. The main difference that causes issues is that the shared memory will only last for 12 hours in the free version and has to be manually enabled again after that time period. So for it to work correct you either need to pay 20 bucks for HWiNFO Pro or use a version prior to the version 7 release. Edit: I have not used it for 12 hours yet so i do not know if you need to enable it only once after the 12 hours to work permanently or every 12 hours

[@JAIJ47]

Ah right, thanks for the info. I haven't updated my HWiNFO version yet so I'm still on v6.34-4300 but I've pinned this comment to let others know.

[@darkaheart]

My rainmeter sensor gadgets don’t load at boot and I’m also using 6.42 (something like that, I’m not home atm)

[@JAIJ47]

@@darkaheart Is this Rainmeter that isn't loading the skin or is this the HWiNFO plugin that isn't loading on startup?

[@darkaheart]

@@JAIJ47 I had the “show sensors on startup” uncheck, it’s confusing because it says “show” I figured they meant the window. I checked it and it’s working fine now

[@JAIJ47]

@@darkaheart Fair enough mate. I also feel it's a bit unintuitive to have a cross on a checkbox as well since it almost looks as if it's a negative action if you get what I mean

[@edwardlthompson]

Excellent option for the hardware monitor. Thank you for making this video.

[@JAIJ47]

No worries mate. Glad I could be of help 😄

[@geshtal2056]

I'm glad to see a video come out where people aren't using Aida64. Aida is nice but limited with gauge sizes and such. I'm going to use this video as my template for my own sensor panel. Thanks for the video.

[@JAIJ47]

You're welcome :). If you need anything clarified further then don't hesitate to ask. I'll try to help as much as I can or at the very least try to find some resources that could help.

[@joransrb]

awesome, thanks for the vid. been looking into make some rainmeter skins and this was helpful :)

[@JAIJ47]

You're welcome, I'm glad if it helps :). If you need anymore help with anything I'll try to help as much as I can.

[@Novadestin]

This is really great and well detailed, thank you so much for sharing! I only have two critiques, one very minimal and one point of improvement. The first is that you started out calling them 'widgets' and then switched to 'skins' in the second half. While not a big deal at all, skins is the correct terminology and widgets is used by XWidget. The second thing is that the text was a bit hard to see/read and I found myself leaning in towards my monitor several times, which makes me think that people on small screens/lower resolutions are going to have a hard time following along in certain parts. You do a good job of explaining what you're doing already, but either finding a way to zoom in or making sure you're being extra specific in your explanations when it comes to text would be very helpful for those who have a hard time with small text. A great example of this would be when you were talking about the file type needing to be ini. In that instance, it would have helped greatly if you'd spelled it out as well. Honestly, this is the first time I've heard someone pronouncing it as a whole word (which doesn't help with how to actually spell it as, if I didn't know already, might have entered 'innie' instead) and, with the small text issue, I felt it was the one time where the tutorial failed to be clear enough because, even with setting the video to the highest quality and leaning in, I still couldn't read things clearly. It was only when I full screened the video (and my monitor is 2560x1440) that I could really see 'ini' clearly. Aside from that, everything was great. I can't talk about how much sense everything made as it made sense to me, but I've been using rainmeter for a long while at this point and can't speak for anyone whose just starting out. I have a feeling it's fine though. All in all, great work and I'll post this on your reddit post as well~!

[@JAIJ47]

Thanks a lot for the feedback. I'll see if enlarging the explorer icons will help to clear some of the small text issues when I next attempt a video. I'm looking to do a little update video some time soon on how I'm attempting to 3D Print an enclosure for the monitor using blender and cura so I'll try to improve the recording when I get to that point.

[@lumpy4278]

Nice video. I am new to rainmeter so can you tell me how to make the skin fullscreen? Also would it be possible for the skin to launch on the display in my case at startup?

[@JAIJ47]

Yeah sure. The way I got my skin to be full screen is by basically just making sure the background image matches the resolution of the screen inside the case and then set the "BackgroundMode" property to 0 (I did put up another video going more indepth with my skin and what each little bit of code does if you want to check that one out as well kzbin.info/www/bejne/pWO3k5yJerR1jtk ) So Rainmeter should already be opening on startup already but if not: Go to Task Manager, open the "Start Up" tab, find Rainmeter in the list, then make sure it's "Enabled". For the skin to launch on the display, it should automatically be doing that since the second display is always plugged in and with Rainmeter opening on startup it should be remembering the position of everything on the monitor on start up

[@lumpy4278]

@@JAIJ47 I’m using an old iPhone 5 for the display inside my pc so for it to be fullscreen would I just get a sideways iPhone 5 background and change the positions and sizes of the temps and stuff according to the background?

[@lumpy4278]

@@JAIJ47 ok I managed to get the background set now i just need help with resizing and positioning the stats. I would like the fan speeds, disk usage, and network traffic removed so i can make everything else bigger. Thanks for your help.

[@bobbob-lb9om]

Do you by chance have a copy of the note file you are using that youd be able to link/send?

[@JAIJ47]

I've got the rainmeter skin in a GitHub repo github.com/JAIJ47/SensorPanel just be aware you may need to change a fair bit to get it to work for yourself and keep in mind the pinned comments about HWiNFO compatibility

[@MarioH73-Lo1-prod]

is therIs there also a way to use a USB monitor I have the ax206?

[@JAIJ47]

Should be able to as long as you extend the displays in Windows and drag the sensor panel over to the monitor you want to display it on

[@ericstackley1023]

i dont get this guide at all are you using a pre design build??i get lost @14:26 with all that coding i dont understand it. where do i get that script u have for sensor panel to use as templet? i guess what im getting out is how do i start from scratch i got all the programs but you go to Sensor panel folder with loads of text where do i get that??

[@JAIJ47]

Feel free to ask more questions if my reply below didn't really make sense. I may make a Rainmeter basics series to explain the components in more detail sometime this weekend if I have time to. I made the skin myself using a mixture of vanilla Rainmeter measures (examples on reading CPU and RAM usage, Disk space, and Network traffic can be found by right clicking and editting parts of the example skin Illustro which is provided by Rainmeter by default once downloaded) and measures using the HWiNFO plugin. I didn't provide a link to download the skin since different hardware setups and systems will have different sensor information so large chunks of the skin may not work for others since I made this specifically for my build. This is also the same reason for why I didn't do a step by step explanation of the skin and tried to keep everything as basic as possible since every section (apart from the CPU and RAM usage, Disk Space, and Network Traffic sections) may be irrelevant to a majority of people watching. To create your own skin from scratch all you have to do is create a new folder in your Skins folder (which can be found in Documents\Rainmeter\Skins). Call it a meaningful name since this is what will show in your Rainmeter UI when you want to load a skin. This part can be found from 14:46 - 15:29. Inside the folder you've just created you just need to add an @Resources folder (to hold any images, fonts, or other resources you might want for your skin) and an ini file (just create a blank text document in Notepad and save it as type .ini). The ini file is your skin as it holds all the measures, meters, styles etc used to display itself. Without meters the skin will not run. This part can be found from 15:30 - 26:01. Now from here it's up to you to decide what info you want to monitor. Everything you want to monitor will go into the .ini file you created. I gave a brief explanation on how to format and use the HWiNFO plugin to create measures for more advanced hardware readings from 26:02 - 29:28. Some other information that might help you to understand the basics can be found in the Rainmeter documentation. I'd recommend reading about measures, styles, and meters first of all just to understand the basics and it'll also give you a decent idea on how the components work together to create and display the skin. The 3 sections are basically the foundation of any skin as they're all required sections for a skin to run. docs.rainmeter.net/manual/measures/ docs.rainmeter.net/manual/meters/general-options/meterstyles/ docs.rainmeter.net/manual/meters/

[@nabilubaidullahmobin2121]

So i wanted to do it by myself and create my own skin but the problem is its not that easy and also didnt found that much helpful video anywhere If i tried aida64 it may be easy but wanted to do it in rainmeter . Can you suggest me something ? I wanted to make gauge,vertical bar and a clock.I tried using skin but cant those arent perfect size and also couldnt understand the ini files (which skin i liked) if you know how to make this skin will you please create a playlist for these if you have time !!

[@JAIJ47]

Sure. I'll look at recording an indepth look at the ini file and try to explain each part as I go over it.

[@nabilubaidullahmobin2121]

@@JAIJ47 thanks a lot . tbh i was inspired to do this after watching your video.

[@JAIJ47]

@@nabilubaidullahmobin2121 Thanks for the support mate. I really do apreciate it. Currently I'm just making a script and going over each line in the ini file. Once that's done and I've recorded, edited, and published the video I'll let you know it's up. I'll be providing timestamps in the description of that video as well since it's quite a bit of content

[@JAIJ47]

@@nabilubaidullahmobin2121 The new video is up going over the code in more depth. I also show examples of vertical bar meters, a gauge, and digital clock/calendar

[@nabilubaidullahmobin2121]

@@JAIJ47 thanks bro btw doesnt hwinfo support psu monitoring ? i bought corsair cv 550w last day but not only hwinfo but also hwmonitor,aida64 arent showing any data .

[@mewmentalent]

could i get your ini file?

[@JAIJ47]

The rainmeter skin can be found on github here github.com/JAIJ47/SensorPanel . Obviously you'll need to download all the components and change the INI file to match your system

[@drbmaitra]

Too long and totally boring. Could have been easily edited to 6-7 minutes.

[@JAIJ47]

Where could I have condensed it to 6-7 minutes in a way for complete beginners to understand?

[@drbmaitra]

@@JAIJ47 people who are willing to build this system knows the basics and some more. You don’t have to explain every point to them. Hardly there are any newbies who sees this sort of videos. JayzTwoCents explained everything and more using AIDA64 (which is a more complicated software) within 10 minutes.

[@JAIJ47]

​@@drbmaitra But what if people "who are willing to build this system" don't know the basics? I personally don't think it's fair to assume that everyone that ever watches this video has intermediate to professional knowledge about PC systems, Rainmeter, Rainmeter plugins, and HWiNFO (see the comment by eric stackley as an example) which is why I attempted to at least explain the basics behind each point. I do agree though, in hindsight, that some of the Rainmeter ini code explainations could have been condensed a bit or at least explained a bit better.

[@drbmaitra]

Then they won’t be able to assemble a basic machine, leave aside creating a second screen for them.

[@JAIJ47]

@@drbmaitra How does building a basic machine have anything to do with displaying sensor information using Rainmeter? You can make a Rainmeter skin without having built a PC before. Creating a sensor panel isn't exclusive to just people who build PCs, it can be done for pre-builds or even laptops as long as there's HDMI output. That's why I didn't go over my PC build in any depth. I only showed an image of my case to explain how I mounted the screen and routed the cables. This is just a video on how I created a custom PC sensor panel. It's not an in depth walkthrough, it's literally just what I used, how I created it, and an explaination of the basics and my reasoning behind each of the steps.